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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 


PRINCETON, N. J. 


PURCHASED BY THE 
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OF THE ORDER OF THE CROWN OF ROUMANIA; 
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TRANSLATED BY 
ALICE GAUSS, A.M. 


AND 


CHRISTIAN GAUSS, A.M., LITT.D. 


PROFESSOR OF MODERN LANGUAGES, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK eb LONDON eh MCMXXVI 


TRIO 


OUP Sone LG Po 197256 per ae 
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


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INTRODUCTION 


M. Jacques Bainville begins his History of France with the 
confession that while at school and college, he had no love for 
history. It bored him. When he later became interested in this 
subject, he sought for the reasons of his previous antipathy 
and he found that what had repelled him was the mere stringing 
out of facts, one after the other. He felt that it had not been 
sufficiently borne in upon him, “why men fought, killed each 
other or became reconciled. History was a collection of footless 
dramas, a mélée, a chaos, in which the intelligence could discern 
nothing.” He came to the conclusion that there must be another 
way to write and teach history. To make it really interesting 
there must be some guiding thread; one must assume that the 
men of the past were like the men of the present and that their 
actions were governed by motives not unlike our own. If the 
merely chronological account is insipid or incoherent, all this 
disappears when the student begins to seek out the reasons for 
what has been done in the past. 

It was to gratify this curiosity that he undertook to write the 
history of his country. First of all he wished to satisfy himself 
and to set forth, as clearly as possible, causes and effects. It is 
in this spirit then that his history was written. 

M. Bainville’s work is original in the sense that it is an inde- 
dependent critique of the facts of history and that it makes 
them intelligible. Its success in France, where within a year 
it has passed through one hundred and twenty-five editions, is 
little less than astounding. He has evidently interpreted the 
history of France in a way to arouse the interest and to meet 
with the approval of a large number of intelligent Frenchmen. 
M. Bainville has already established his reputation as an able 
critic and man of letters; to the interest of his method he has 
added the further attraction of an accomplished style. 

When M. Bainville insists that he has maintained no thesis 
the statement should he taken as true in the sense that his inter- 

Vv 


Ge INTRODUCTION 


pretation of the facts of French history was undertaken in 
evident good faith and sincerity. It should not be assumed that 
in its results it is unpartisan. What he has really done is to 
disengage, to show in operation the forces which in his opinion 
have made for the greatness of France. The reader is left in 
no doubt as to what these forces were. M. Bainville is a con- 
servative, a traditionalist and, as he sees it, the two forces which 
have made for the greatness of France are the Monarchy and 


the Church. 
CHRISTIAN Gauss. 


TRANSLATOR’S NOTE 


Where in his exposition the author has assumed on the part of 
his French public a knowledge of facts not possessed by the 
ordinary American reader, occasional brief explanations have 
been added to the text, and occasional discussions of points in 
controversy have been abbreviated to keep the work within 
the same compass. In no respect, however, has the spirit of 
M. Bainville’s text been altered. The interpretation of French 
history, therefore, as given in the body of this work is M. Bain- 
ville’s and in no sense that of his translator. 

In so brief a work, for the author has succeeded in telling his 
story in a single volume, there is necessarily much foreshorten- 
ing. In attempting to disengage the rôle of traditional forces, 
M. Bainville occasionally neglects to mention facts which other 
French historians have regarded as important and which are at 
variance with his conelusions. In order to make it possible for 
the American reader to reach his own conclusions, the most im- 
portant of these facts are indicated in footnotes by the translator. 
He has not, however, even where he disagrees, attempted to 
enter into controversy with the author, believing that his volume 
is not only an interesting history of the France of the past, but 
a highly significant presentation of the political philosophy 
which may not inconceivably become a force in the France of 
the future. Whether or not the forces which M. Bainville sees 
as the dominant and valuable element in French life are cor- 
rectly diagnosed it is not our purpose to discuss. M. Bainville 
belongs to the school of Charles Maurras and the views here 
advanced have been held to a greater or less degree by French- 
men as representative and as distinguished as M. Paul Bourget 
and the late Maurice Barres. 


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CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 


TRANSLATOR’S NOTE . 


CHAPTER 


VII. 


VIII. 


During 500 YEARS GAUL SHARES THE LIFE OP 
RoME . 


. THe MEROVINGIAN ATTEMPT 


. GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF THE CAROLINGIANS 


THe REVOLUTION oF 987 AND THE COMING OF THE 
CAPETIANS 


FROM THE DEATH oF HuGcH CAPET TO THE Hun- 
DRED YEARS’ WAR 


. THe HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR AND THE PARIS REvo- 


LUTIONS 


Lovis XI— FRANCE Resumes HER PROGRESS 
(1461-1515) . 


Francis I AND HENRY II THE STRUGGLE oF 
FRANCE AGAINST THE GERMANIC EMPIRE 
(1515-1559), 


. Crviz AND RELIGIOUS WARS BRING FRANCE TO THE 


VERGE OF RUIN 


Henry IV RESTORES THE MONARCHY AND REVIVES 
THE STATE 


. Louris XIII AND RICHELIEU— THE STRUGGLE WITH 


THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA . 


. THE LESSON oF THE FRONDE 

. Louis XIV FOR 

. Te Recency AND Louis XV 

. Louis XVI AND THE BEGINNING OF THE REvo- 


LUTION 
1x 


108 


124 


145 


157 
170 
181 
210 


244 


x 


CHAPTER 


POV: 
Vahl 
XVIII. 
XIX. 
VAE 
PONG ke 
XXII. 


INDEX . 


CONTENTS 


THE REVOLUTION 

THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 
THE RESTORATION 

THE MoNARCHY OF JULY 


THE SECOND REPUBLIC AND THE SECOND EMPIRE . 


THe THirp REPUBLIC 
WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND Days 


PAGE 


273 
319 
353 
376 
393 
419 
453 
475 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Lovis THE FOURTEENTH 


CHARLEMAGNE 
PHILIP THE SECOND . 
Louis THE ELEVENTH 
FRANCIS THE FIRST . 
HENRY THE FOURTH 
CARDINAL RICHELIEU 


NAPOLEON THE FIRST ., . . 


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96 

110 
148 
102 
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HISTORY OF FRANCE 


CHAPTER I 
DURING 500 YEARS GAUL SHARES THE LIFE OF ROME 


Men have probably lived upon the earth for hundreds of 
centuries. But beyond twenty-five hundred years ago, the ori- 
gins of France are lost in conjecture and obscurity. A long 
shadowy period precedes her history. On the soil of France 
migrations and conquests had followed each other up to the 
time when the Gaels or Gauls became her masters, either driving 
out the occupants they found there, or merging with them. 
These earlier inhabitants were Ligurians and Iberians, dark 
and of medium stature, and they still constitute the basis of the 
French population. The tradition of the Druids would have 
it, that part of the Gauls was indigenous while the rest came 
from the north and beyond the Rhine; for the Rhine has always 
seemed to be the frontier of Gaul. Thus the fusion of races 
began in prehistoric time. The French people are a com- 
posite; they are more than a race, they are a nation. 

Unique in Europe, the conformation of France was such that 
it lent itself to all shifting currents, both of blood and of ideas. 
France is an isthmus, a highway of communication between 
the north and south. Before the Roman conquest there were 
remarkable differences between the Greek colony of Marseilles 
and the Celts between the Seine and the Loire and the Belgae 
between the Meuse and the Seine. Other elements in large num- 
ber have, in the course of the centuries, been added to these. 
The fusion took place little by little, leaving only a fortunate 
diversity. It is to this that France owes her moral and intel- 
lectual riches, her equilibrium and her genius. 

It is commonly said that in this fertile country, upon this 


fortunately shaped land, there was destined to be a great people. 
1 


2 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


This is merely taking the effect for the cause. We are accus- 
tomed to see on this part of the map a state whose unity and 
solidarity are almost unparalleled. This state did not grow 
up by itself, nor did it come into being without a struggle. It 
is the work of the hand of man. It has several times collapsed 
but it has been rebuilt. The combination, France, seems natural 
to us. There have been and there might have been many other 
combinations, - 

Harmonious to the eye, the shape of this country is seriously 
defective in other respects. On the north and east, France has 
weak land frontiers which expose her to the invasions of a dan- 
gerous enemy. Furthermore, Flanders, Germany, Italy, Spain 
have ever made her uneasy, distracted her attention, tended to 
pull her apart. If she possesses the unique advantage of access 
to all the European seas, on the other hand, her maritime fron- 
tiers are too extensive, are difficult to defend and demand either 
a considerable effort or involve difficult decisions of policy. 
For the ocean calls for one fleet and the Mediterranean for an- 
other. If France is not directed by men of very great common 
sense, she risks neglecting the sea for the land or inversely; or 
she may even allow herself to be carried too far in either direc- 
tion, a situation in which she will repeatedly find herself. If 
she takes no pains to be strong at sea, she is at the mercy of a 
maritime power which then places obstacles in the way of her 
other designs. Jf she wishes to be strong at sea, the same mari- 
time power takes umbrage at her progress and a new kind of 
conflict results. Nearly a thousand years of an era not yet con- 
cluded will be divided between sea and land, between England 
and Germany. Thusthe history of France is that of the elabora- 
tion and conservation of a country through accidents, difficul- 
ties and storms, both from within and without; a score of times 
they have all but overthrown her house, and after them she has 
been forced to rebuild it. France is the product of will and 
intelligence. 

To what does she owe her civilization? To what does she 
owe the fact that she is what she is? To the Roman conquest. 
This conquest would have failed; it would have taken place 


GAUL SHARES THE LIFE OF ROME 3 


much later, under different conditions, possibly less favorable, 
if the Gauls had not been divided among themselves and lost in 
their own anarchy. Cæsar’s campaigns were greatly facilitated 
by tribal jealousies and rivalries. These Gallic tribes were 
numerous; the administration of Augustus later recognized not 
less than sixty nations or cities. At no time, not even under 
the noble Vercingetorix did Gaul succeed in presenting a truly 
united front. There were merely coalitions. Rome always 
found some among the tribes who were ready to espouse her 
cause either directly or by connivance; as, for example, the 
Remi (of Rheims) and the Aeduans of the Saône. Civil war, 
the great Gallic vice, delivered the country to the Romans. / A 
formless, unstable government, a primitive political organiza- 
tion hesitating between democracy and oligarchy, was, what 
frustrated the efforts of Gaul to defend her independence.» 

The French are still proud of the national uprising of which 
Vercingetorix was the soul. The Gauls were military by tem- 
perament and their expeditions and migrations have, in ancient 
times, carried them across Europe and into Asia Minor. Rome 
trembled when they entered that city as conquerors. <A people 
cannot exist without military virtues, and these the Gauls 
transmitted to their descendants; but military virtues alone do 
not suffice to make a people. The heroism of Vercingetorix and 
of his allies has not been lost; it was a seed which was later to 
bear fruit. But it was impossible for Vercingetorix to triumph 
definitively and it would have been a misfortune if he had. 

At the time when the Gallic chief was put to death after the 
conquest of Cesar (51 8.c.), no comparison was possible be- 
tween the Roman and that poor Gallic civilization which knew 
nothing of writing and whose religion had not yet advanced be- 
yond the stage of human sacrifices. France owes everything to 
that conquest. It was harsh; Cesar had been cruel and pitiless. 
Civilization was imposed upon the ancestors of the French by 
fire and sword, and bought at the price of blood. But they have 
become highly civilized and if they have enjoyed a considerable 
advantage over other peoples, they owe it to this violence. 

The Gauls themselves were not slow to recognize that this 


+ HISTORY OF FRANCE 


force had been beneficial. They had the gift of assimilation, a 
natural aptitude which made it easy for them to accept the 
Greco-Latin civilization which had already begun to penetrate 
by way of Marseilles and the Narbonne country. Never has 
colonization been more fortunate or brought forth finer fruit 
than that of the Romans in Gaul. Other colonizing races have 
destroyed the conquered peoples; or, the vanquished, forced back 
upon themselves, have lived apart from their conquerors. One 
hundred years after Üæsar, the fusion was almost complete and 
Gauls were already sitting in the Roman senate. 

Up to 472, until the downfall of the Western Empire, the 
history of Gaul is merged with that of Rome. We are apt to 
overlook the fact that France lived through one fourth of her 
entire history since the beginning of the Christian era, in that 
close association with the Roman world; four or five centuries, 
a period of time nearly as long as from the reign of Louis XII 
to our own day, a period filled with as many events and revolu- 
tions. The details, if we paused to deal with them, would be 
wearisome. Yet what are the main lines which a study of the 
time reveals to us? The permanent characteristics of France 
are in process of formation. 

It is probable that but for the Romans, Gaul would have been 
Teutonized. There seemed to be beyond the Rhine an inex- 
haustible reservoir of men; again and again tribes set forth 
driven by want, by a thirst for pillage, or forced out by other 
migrations behind them. After having been invaders, the 
Gauls in their turn were invaded. It is doubtful if, left to 
themselves, they could have resisted. Even in 102 8.0. it had 
taken the legions of Marius to deliver Gaul from the Teutons 
who had advanced as far as the Rhone. This coming of Marius 
rendered immense service to Gaul, not only in that it made it 
possible for her to drive out these Teutons, barbarians, as they 
were called at that time, but in that it greatly aided the Roman 
penetration of the country. The occasion of Cæsar’s first cam- 
paign, in 58 B.c., was likewise an invasion by the Germans. 
He came in the rôle of protector and his conquest began by what 
we should call an armed intervention. 


GAUL SHARES THE LIFE OF ROME 5 


That conquest once completed, we find Rome allied with the 
Gauls for defense against Germany. This bond, strengthened 
by the attraction of the Greco-Latin civilization, served as 
nothing else could to cement the friendship of the Romans 
and the Gauls. They became two nations united in the defense 
of the common good. This is the significance of that famous 
discourse to the Gauls which Tacitus puts into the mouth of 
Cerialis after the latter’s victory over the Batavians: “We 
have not established ourselves on the Rhine to protect Italy, 
but to prevent a new Ariovistus from conquering the Gauls. 
The Germans have ever had the same reason for entering your 
territory: restlessness, greed and a passion for change, a natural 
enough passion when instead of their marshes and deserts they 
hope not only to gain a soil of unusual fertility but also to 
become your masters.” 

The Roman policy was so farseeing and the Roman Empire 
realized so well the rôle she was playing in the world, that 
Tacitus also attributes these further words to Cerialis: ‘“Sup- 
pose the Romans should be driven from their conquests, what 
would result except a general mingling of all the peoples of 
the earth ?” 

That day was to come and the Roman Empire was to fall; 
the dam would be broken and the prophecy fulfilled. This 
catastrophe which long made Europeans look back so wistfully 
upon the last “Roman peace” teaches us that progress is neither 
inevitable nor continuous. More than that it teaches us how 
fragile is civilization, destined as it is to undergo long eclipses or 
even to perish when it loses its foundations—order, authority 
and the political institutions on which it is established. 

Until that fatal century when the barbarians overwhelmed 
them both, Gaul and Rome had to repel numerous attacks by 
the Teutons; a significant premonition of struggles to come. 
In 275, the emperor, Probus, drove back and severely punished 
the Germans who had advanced far into Gaul and who in their 
retreat left behind them ruins and a desert. They had even, 
as in 1918, cut down the fruit trees. ighty years later 
Emperor Julian, who had so loved life in Paris, was besieged 


6 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


by the Germans deep within Gaul, in the city of Sens, before 
he drove them back across the Rhine and imposed on them a 
tribute as “reparation” (even then it was the same thing and 
the same word), for the devastation of which they had again 
been guilty. 

In proportion as the Empire grew weaker, sapped by in- 
ternal dissensions and anarchy, these invasions became more 
frequent and at her gates the number of insistent barbarians 
increased. New tribes were ever coming to the fore; fortu- 
nately they were always rivals, and one drove the other out 
as the Goths drove out the Vandals. However in the fifth 
century the collaboration of Gaul and Rome was shown once 
more in a manner not to be forgotten, in Ætius, the conqueror 
of Attila. The King of the Huns, the “Scourge of God,” was 
at the head of an empire which might be compared to that of 
the Mongolians. He himself was like a Genghis Khan or a 
Tamerlaine and commanded peoples who until that time had 
been unknown. Ætius with the aid of the Visigoths and the 
Franks conquered him near Châlons and this victory has ever 
remained a proud memory for the Western peoples (451). 

This is the first time that we have mentioned the name of 
the Franks, a people destined to play so great a rôle in this 
country of the Gauls and from whom France was to take her 
name. For many years they had been established along the 
Meuse and the Rhine and, like other barbarians, had served as 
auxiliaries in the Roman armies. They were Rhinelanders 
and one of their tribes was called the Ripuarians, “people of 
the river banks,” because they inhabited the left bank of the 
Rhine in the region of Cologne and Treves. 

How was it that so great a rôle was reserved for the 
Franks? Known by Rome since the first century they had 
given her not only soldiers, but from time to time generals 
and even a consul and an empress. It was not this however 
which distinguished them from the other barbarians Rome 
had undertaken to attract, assimilate and use against the Ger- 
mans across the Rhine. The Franks were in general rather 
backward as compared to the peoples of Germanic origin in- 


GAUL SHARES THE LIFE OF ROME 7 


stalled like themselves within the natural boundaries of Gaul. 
The Goths and the Burgundians, granted the title of “guests” 
long before, were more advanced and polished. This cireum- 
stance was one day to be to their disadvantage as against the 
hardier Franks. 

At the time when the Empire of the West disappeared, the 
Franks established in the Rhine countries and in Belgium were 
still rude warriors whom no contacts had softened. They were 
soldiers and their government was military. The members of 
the Merovingian family, from which the later Merovingian 
dynasty was named, were, like their fellows, leaders of tribes 
only, but they were leaders, That is why the tradition which 
refers the foundation of the French monarchy back to these 
petty kings is not absurd; although in reality the Frankish 
kings before Clovis had counted for much less with the Gallo- 
Romans than Gothic chiefs like Alaric. 

These Franks, few in number but irresistible in war, held 
in their power the points of vantage from which France could 
be dominated, the points which commanded the routes of in- 
vasion and from which an enemy could penetrate to the heart 
of the country, in other words, to Paris. They thus held the 
strategic positions, Another circumstance was perhaps even 
more favorable to them: the Franks were not Christians. This 
reason for their success seems rather surprising at first, but we 
shall see by what a natural chain of events it was to serve to 
their advantage. 

At a very early date Gaul had become Christian and had had 
her martyrs. The Church at Lyons was the center of propa- 
ganda. Very early, this Gallo-Roman Christianity took on an 
orthodox character. As soon as it had begun to spread, the 
Christian religion found many heretics and nowhere were the 
dissenters attacked with more zeal than in Gaul. Saint Irenæus 
took up the defense of dogma against the Gnostics; Saint Hilary 
struggled against a graver heresy and one which almost con- 
quered him—Arianism. The barbarians already established in 
Gaul, having been converted, immediately became Arians. 
When the Franks appeared in their turn, there was a rôle for 


8 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


them to play. Gaul herself had called them and the Church 
saw that these newcomers, these pagans, natural rivals of the 
Burgundians and of the Goths, could be drawn into the true 
faith. This was the secret of the success of Clovis and it is one 
of the reasons why it cannot be said that there was ever a 
Frankish conquest. 

For a long time the Roman Empire had been in its death 
agony. In dying it was overwhelmed with a terrifying con- 
fusion. Since there was no secular authority, such authority 
as existed fell naturally into.the hands of those who possessed 
the moral ascendancy, that is of the priests. People grouped 
themselves about these “defenders of the cities,” but the Church 
understood that her mission was not the exercise of temporal 
power. She held to the traditional distinction between the 
temporal and the spiritual, and cherished an admiration for 
Roman order. To reéstablish some authority among the Gauls, 
and to make that authority Christian and orthodox, such was 
the idea and the work of the clergy. Two men of great intelli- 
gence, King Clovis and the Archbishop of Rheims, Saint 
Remigius, united to achieve this end. But it would be difficult 
to understand their success without first realizing the anguish, 
the terror for the future which seized the Gallo-Roman peoples 
when once Rome had fallen and her beneficent protection had 
ceased. 

This fertile country, covered with rich monuments and sup- 
porting an industrious population, in which a middle class, like 
the products of the soil, tended to spring up after every tem- 
pest, was by natural instinct, conservative. It had a horror of 
anarchy. The communists of the time, called the Bagaude, 
whose attempts at revolutions had always been suppressed, were 
not less dreaded than the barbarians from without the boun- 
daries. Roman Gaul desired a vigorous ruler, and it was at 
this juncture that Clovis appeared. 

Hardly had Clovis succeeded his father Childerie than he 
set his warriors on the march from Tournai, his residence, 
towards the center of the country. He was setting out to con- 
quer the Gauls. Soissons was governed by a kind of patriarch, 


GAUL SHARES THE LIFE OF ROME 9 


Syagrius, surviving relic of the disappearing Empire. Saint 
Remigius saw there was no salvation in that quarter. What 
other force was there then but this barbarian from the north ? 
What would be gained by resisting him? Clovis would destroy 
everything, leave other ruins and bring another anarchy. 
There was a wiser course than to combat him; it was to wel- 
come him as conqueror, aid him, surround him, in order to 
convert him to the true faith. Manifestly his coming was 
inevitable. It remained to make the best of it both for the 
present and for the future. 

Clovis on his side had certainly pondered and thought out 
his plans. He was well informed concerning the moral state 
of Gaul. This barbarian had a taste for glory and his enter- 
prise had no chance of succeeding, of lasting and developing 
unless he respected catholicism which had entered so profoundly 
into Gallo-Roman life. The famous incident of the Soissons 
vase proves how clear was his vision. The summary execution 
of a soldier guilty of sacrilege did more than all else for the 
triumph of Clovis. It was one of those acts which reveal the 
great statesman. 

But Clovis was yet to be converted. His conversion was 
admirably staged. This barbarian was intelligent: he re- 
enacted the conversion of the Emperor Constantine on the field 
of battle. Only, when at Tolbiac (496), he made a vow that 
he would receive baptism if he was victorious, the enemy was 
Germanic. Not only had Clovis become a Christian but he 
had put to flight the traditional invader, he had chased to the 
other side of the Rhine the hereditary enemy of France. From 
that time on, his power over Romanized Gaul was irresistible. 

It may be said that it was at this moment that France began. 
She already possessed her principal characteristics. Her civil- 
ization was strong enough to withstand the influx of the Franks 
and to leave the material power in their hands. And she had 
great need of this Frankish strength. She would assimilate 
these men, she would polish them. Like her civilization, her 
religion was Roman and that religion was saved: henceforth, 
throughout the centuries, the basis of religious France will be 


10 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


orthodox catholicism. In short, anarchy had been avoided, a 
governing power, rude though it was, had been recreated, and 
France could afford to wait for it to pass into better hands. 
This power will be monarchie and will tend to realize the Ro- 
man idea of the unity of the state. Nothing of all this will be 
lost. Through the vicissitudes of the ages these traits will 
ever be reappearing. 

However France was far from being securely founded and 
sure of her destiny. The Frankish monarchy had only been 
a last resort in the minds of-the men of the Church who had 
welcomed it. In spite of its imperfections, it was to seve 
through nearly three hundred years to preserve the Gauls from 
the total ruin which had threatened them at the fall of the 
Roman Empire. 


CHAPTER II 
THE MEROVINGIAN ATTEMPT 


Tur early career of Clovis was so full of promise that one 
might have expected him to leave some lasting work. In a few 
years, and after a few expeditions, he became master of Gaul. 
His campaigns were both political and military. Everywhere 
he appeared as the liberator and protector of Catholics in the 
countries controlled by the Arian barbarians. Gundibald, King 
of Burgundy (and Burgundy comprised all the valley of the 
Rhone), became tributary to him and gave guaranties to these 
Gallo-Romans. Aquitaine and the valley of the Garonne was 
delivered from the Goths. It was at this time that Clovis re- 
ceived the consecration which he still lacked. Having received 
the approval of the Church he still needed that of the emperor. 
The Empire, far off at Constantinople, had no more authority 
in the West, but still kept its prestige. When Clovis received 
from Anastasius the insignia and dignity of consul, a thing 
which no other barbarian had yet obtained, he found his power 
increased. For the Merovingian dynasty thus became a part 
of the Roman Empire and seemed to continue it, having now 
become “legitimate.” That is one of the reasons why it man- 
aged to endure for two centuries and a half. 

Yet all this time Clovis was not so powerful in his native 
country as in his new domains. The Frankish tribes who had 
remained pagan had as chiefs men who were not disposed to 
obey this converted upstart. These petty chiefs, some of whom 
were his relatives, could become dangerous. Clovis saw no 
other means but to do away with them. He struck at the head 
and executed a series of political crimes by a ruse of which the 
good Gregory of Tours has left a naive account. If Clovis had 
not wiped out these minor kings he would have been exposed 


to their coalition, and in a civil war between Frankish tribes, 
11 


12 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


it is not at all certain that his warriors would have remained 
loyal to him. In fact, by these rather unscrupulous means, he 
achieved unity in the north of his kingdom; and he had public 
opinion with him. For it mattered not at all to the Gallo- 
Roman population if barbarian chiefs were treated in a manner 
more than barbarous, so long as they themselves retained their 
customs, their laws, and their religion of which Clovis was the 
instrument. In killing pagans such as Ragnachaire and 
Sigibert—or in having them killed, he opened a new field to 
Christianity. These murders were political operations whose 
success proves that Clovis now had the firm support of Gaul. 

It is not proper, therefore, to speak of a conquest or of a 
subjugation of Gaul by the Franks, but rather of a protection 
and an alliance, followed by a rapid fusion of the races. The 
very manner in which these things took place, as we have just 
seen, shows that the Gallo-Roman element had summoned the 
authority of Clovis, and that Clovis, on his side, had understood 
very well that this unsettled people, fearing the worst, desired 
a strong authority. If it had been otherwise, if the Gallo- 
Romans had been happy in government under other barbarian 
chiefs, Clovis would not have succeeded. In addition, the 
Frankish tribes were not numerous enough to subjugate all 
Gaul, any more than they were capable of ruling her. For 
these reasons one suddenly finds the Merovingians surrounded 
by high functionaries with Latin names, who sprung from the 
old senatorial families, while Gallo-Roman generals com- 
manded the Frankish armies. The laws and the taxes were 
the same for all. The population quite naturally intermarried 
and Latin became the official language of the Franks who for- 
got their own, while that vulgar tongue, the Romance language, 
which was later to give birth to the French, was slowly being 
formed. 

The greater part of the offices remained in the hands of the 
Gallo-Romans and far from being “enslaved” they continued 
the imperial administration. And it was the Franks who pro- 
tested, in the name of their customs, against the new regulations 
made for them. They had a notion of right and liberty that 


THE MEROVINGIAN ATTEMPT 13 


was Germanic and anarchical and against this the Merovingian 
kings had to contend. Their “free men” had been used to ruling 
the chief through their assemblies. The civil discipline of 
Rome was hateful to them and it was difficult to mold them to 
it. But in the end they were the conquered rather than the 
conquerors. What has been said about «the distribution of 
lands among the Frankish warriors is only fable, and Fustel de 
Coulanges has shown that the Gallo-Roman property changed 
neither in character nor ownership. 

How does it happen that the work of Clovis was not more 
enduring, that France was not established from that time on? 
Perhaps his Frankish monarchy succeeded too quickly and was 
not the result of patience and of time. But it possessed within 
itself one outstanding vice which nothing could correct. It 
was the Frankish custom that the royal domain should be 
divided, to the exclusion of the daughters, among the sons of 
the dead king. Applied to Gaul and to the recent conquests 
of Clovis, this barbarous and primitive law was even more 
absurd. It was nevertheless observed, and on this point at 
least the Frankish custom did not yield. The four sons of 
Clovis shared in the succession (511). Not until the Capetians 
(987) would monarchy and unity become synonymous. 

The Roman idea of unity and of a state persisted in the 
minds of men. One might have thought that the four sons of 
Clovis would unite to continue the task of their father. They 
themselves probably believed it, but it was contrary to the na- 
ture of things. The dividing of the kingdom brought about dis- 
sensions and from this moment dates a fatal opposition between 
Neustria and Austrasia; an opposition in which peoples counted 
for nothing, since it was a struggle between Paris and Metz, 
and Rouen and Verdun. It was a deplorable consequence of a 
political error. And this error should not allow us to forget 
that the Merovingian rule, imperfect as it was, was better than 
chaos. In Italy, in the very cradle of Roman power, in spite 
of Theodoric, whose work was not continued, we find no equiva- 
lent to the Merovingians, and Italy, disintegrated, will be thir- 
teen hundred years in recovering her unity. | 


14 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Such is the service that the Clovises, Lothaires, and Chil- 
perichs rendered France. After them, the Carolingians will 
hold off for a time the inevitable crisis which will come when 
the disruptive tendencies of feudalism will make themselves 
felt. During these four centuries the idea of the state will, 
however, not perish and the Capetians will be able once more to 
reéstablish it. The Roman tradition will not be altogether 
broken. But for the Merovingians, all that was done later to 
build up France would not have been possible, or at least, would 
have met with greater difficulties. 

The eldest son of Clovis, Theuderich, received with Aus- 
trasia, or the eastern country, the greater part of the Frankish 
Empire. Metz was his capital. It was also that part most 
exposed to the attacks of the Germans, the Burgundians and the 
Goths, and it was given to Theuderich because, being the eldest, 
he was most capable of defending it. His young brothers 
shared Neustria or the western country, a country entirely 
Gallo-Roman. It is immediately evident that the King of 
Austrasia was to be the most influential as he had the support 
of the Franks themselves and lived in the native country of the 
Merovingians. Having a foot on each bank of the Rhine, he 
protected Gaul against Germanic invasions. 

If we pass over certain family difficulties, the heirs of Clovis 
for the most part continued the work of their father. And 
there followed almost forty years of brilliant campaigns carried 
even into Italy and Spain, to defend the frontiers of the Mero- 
vingian kingdom, an epitome of future history; a military epic 
which like the Napoleonic epic was repeated in story until it 
should finally sink into oblivion. But at the death of Theude- 
bald, son of Theuderich, terrible dissensions broke out among 
the descendants of Clovis. Austrasians and Neustrians strug- 
gled for preéminence. It was a matter of determining who 
should rule. The dramatic struggles between Chilperich and 
Sigibert, the interminable rivalry between Fredegund and 
Brunhild, all had this same origin. Thus ambitious parties 
were struggling with each other for supremacy and all idea of 
nationality was absent from these conflicts. 


THE MEROVINGIAN ATTEMPT 15 


After this long civil war, the Empire of the Franks was 
once more united under a single hand, that of Clotaire IT. But 
Austrasia, Burgundy and Neustria had each kept a distinct 
administration and as a result of these disorders, the royal 
power was considerably broken up and enfeebled. Great and 
small, laymen and clergy, all had wrested immunities from it. 
The power was dwindling and the territory was being divided 
up. In addition, during this troubled time, when violent deaths 
were frequent, there had been minorities as a result of which a 
new power had sprung up—that of the mayor of the palace. 
He was virtually prime minister and became viceroy when the 
king was a minor or incapable of ruling. With these mayors 
of the palace appeared a new force. One of them, Pippin, of 
Landen, in Austrasia, was to give birth to a second dynasty. 

The Merovingians had two more periods of brilliancy and 
strength under Clotaire II and Dagobert. The former, a great 
scholar, a great builder, a true artist, has become famous, as 
has his minister, Saint Eloi. It is perhaps he, of all the princes 
of his race who carried out most fully the imitation of the 
Roman emperors. The Franks had become entirely Romanized. 

After Dagobert (683) came decadence. The kingdom was 
again parceled out and the result of this division was all the 
more serious as some of his descendants were minors. The 
mayors of the palace became the real masters. A few Mero- 
vingians, when they became of age, tried to regain and re- 
establish the royal authority but none was strong enough to 
make headway against the current. People had lost the habit 
of obeying. The nobles made conspiracy after conspiracy and 
were defending something that they already called liberty. 
Chilperich II was thought a despot and a reactionary. He was 
assassinated. For years civil war ensued between rival parties 
who exploited the old competition between Neustrians and 
Austrasians and who, according to the needs of the day, 
crowned or dethroned the youthful kings. The great conflict 
which set Ebroin, mayor of Neustria, against Saint Léger, all 
powerful in Burgundy, would make an intricate history of 
coups d’état and political revolutions. When this anarchy into 


16 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


which France was sinking began to show itself, contemporaries 
looked on in terror. 

Something was lacking. The Merovingian experiment, so 
well begun, was ending badly. There was need of a new Clovis. 
Where was he to be found? It is not easy to lay the founda- 
tions of a dynasty. There was indeed, in Austrasia, a family 
whose influence kept increasing, and it was Austrasia, in spite 
of the efforts of the statesmen of Neustria, who possessed the 
greatest material means for the direction of the Frankish 
empire. This family, that of the dukes of Héristal, which was 
to be the source of the Carolingian dynasty and which was con- 
nected with the mayor of the palace, took almost a hundred 
years to secure the crown. It was a long wearisome task till 
the day when circumstances permitted its substitution for the 
previously reigning house. 

The Héristals, or the Pippins, succeeded because they had 
sufficient time and because they rendered the services which 
people expected. Rich and powerful in Austrasia where they 
bore the title of duke, they represented at the frontiers of 
the Germanic world a civilization both Catholic and Roman 
which it required great political strength to maintain. Also 
they had with them both the Church and those sentiments which 
had previously assured the success of Clovis. It was this which 
gave promise of allowing them to reéstablish the unity of Gaul, 
supported as they were by Austrasia which was the seat of 
their power. In fact, the ancestors of Charlemagne rose by 
that same process which in our time had carried the electors 
of Brandenburg to the imperial throne of Germany, and the 
dukes of Savoy to the throne of Italy. 

The first stage consisted in overcoming the opposition of the 
political leaders of Neustria. This was the work of Pippin of 
Héristal. By 687, after the battle of Tertry (near Péronne), 
Pippin, having overcome the Neustrian mayors like Ebroin and 
his weaker successors, dealt the death blow to the Merovingian 
dynasty. If the latter still existed at all it was only in the 
use which one party made of it against another. Beginning at 
this moment, the Merovingians, holding but a meaningless 


THE MEROVINGIAN ATTEMPT 17 


title, were no more than ‘rois fainéants,”’ do-nothing-kings, 
paraded in their oxcarts. The real power lay in other hands; 
in short, with the prince and duke of Austrasia. 

Yet at the same time, Pippin of Héristal did not feel him- 
self strong enough to create a new dynasty, while the other 
was slowly dying. He did not wish to hurry things unduly. 
Neustria and Burgundy were not yet ready. There were diffi- 
culties here and there. At times ancient parties came to life 
again. Pippin died in 714 without having found an opportu- 
nity to take the crown. After his death all his work came 
near going for naught. Civil war broke out again, aggravated 
by foreign war; for the Neustrian party did not hesitate to 
ally itself with the German tribes which had revolted against 
the Austrasians. It was a serious error on the part of 
Ragenfrid, mayor of Neustria. It gave to Pippin’s heir the 
opportunity to appear before Christian and Roman France as 
the true defender of civilization and nationality. 

The heir was Charles Martel. The Héristals were certainly 
a gifted race. Charles had character and talent. Circum- 
stances played into his hands and he excelled in making the 
most of them. It is always through services rendered that 
leaders impose themselves upon a people and Charles will 
represent order and security. He had already conquered the 
Neustrian agitators; law and order were reéstablished and he 
conquered the Saxons, who were ever ready to invade. But 
an opportunity even more favorable than the others was about 
to offer itself in the form of a new invasion, that of the Arabs. 
It was not only a race, but a religion, a hostile people which 
had appeared. Coming from farthest Arabia, Islam advanced 
toward the west. It had rendered powerless the Empire of 
Constantinople, had conquered northern Africa and Spain as 
far as the valleys of the Garonne and the Rhone. This menace 
made once more for unity among the Gauls. Aquitaine, always 
jealous of her independence even under the powerful Merovin- 
gians, became alarmed and turned her eyes toward the great 
military commander of the north. There was need of a savior 
and there was no one but the Duke of Austrasia. It is impossible 


18 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


to say whether Charles bided his time in order to have his 
services the more appreciated, or whether his delay was caused 
by the need of assembling and training his troops. In any case, 
he did not begin his campaign until after the capture of Bor- 
deaux by the Arabs. They were continuing their invasion 
when Charles met and defeated them near Poitiers in 732, and 
received the name of Charles Martel, the Hammer. 

The Austrasian had delivered the country and he continued, 
in the south, to wipe out the Arabs. After such a service to the 
nation, the Héristals appeared as saviors. Conqueror of the 
“infidels,”? Charles was at the same time a national and a Chris- 
tian hero, Pope Gregory III solicited his help and Charles 
answered in haste: this opportunity was not to be lost. After 
this who should prevent his becoming king? He had no wish 
to ruin his chances by being over-hasty. He secured his power 
by merely failing to appoint a successor to an obscure 
Merovingian, Theuderich IV, who had died in 737. 

Charles was so far sovereign, without ever having the title, 
that he fell into the custom of the Franks—the error of Clovis. 
Before he died he divided his states between his two sons Carlo- 
man and Pippin. But everything worked for the success of 
the Héristals. Pippin and Carloman, by a miracle, were agreed. 
The old parties had raised their heads again, troubles had 
broken out. The two brothers brought from a cloister a 
last scion of the Merovingians, in order to give themselves the 
character of legitimate rulers. They put down the rebellions. 
That done, Carloman had the generosity to abdicate and leave 
the power to his brother, the energetic Pippin. The last ob- 
stacles were overcome, the Carolingian dynasty now succeeded 
the Merovingian which had become a mere shadow. The de 
facto status was consecrated not only by the consent of the nobles 
and of the nation, but also by a consultation with the Pope who 
was of the opinion that the true king was he who held the 
power ; thus Zacharias made recompense for the service rendered 
to Gregory III by the father of Pippin. 

The change of dynasty occurred without any upheaval. It 
had been admirably brought about. Every precaution had been 


THE MEROVINGIAN ATTEMPT 19 


taken. The last Merovingian had disappeared, publie opinion 
approved. The consecration by the papacy rendered the rights 
of the new dynasty incontestable and created a new legitimate 
line. The substitution was so natural that it passed almost 
unnoticed. The mayor of the palace had become king. Au- 
thority was reéstablished, and power was exercised by its 
holders. A new era had begun, that of the descendants of 
Charles Martel, the Carolingians. 


CHAPTER III 
GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF THE CAROLINGIANS 


Pozrrics has always been carried on with sentiments and 
with ideas. At all times it has been necessary that peoples 
should give their consent if they were to be governed. This 
consent was not lacking in the case of the second dynasty any 
more than in the case of the first. There was no more conquest 
in the one case than in the other. Under the Merovingians the 
Franks had been assimilated. When the Carolingians came 
the assimilation was complete, and the character of the dynasty 
gives proof of this fact. We find in the genealogy of the new 
kings marks of all the races and provinces, of Aquitaine and 
Narbonne, as well as of Austrasia. They were the highest ex- 
pression of the spirit of their time, and it was their task to 
satisfy the aspirations of their period. 

The splendor which the name of Charlemagne has left in 
history is sufficient to show how far they succeeded. For his 
contemporaries this reign was a renaissance. France flourished 
in the reaction which ended the anarchy of the last Merovin- 
gian period. Order was reéstablished and power restored. The 
idea of Rome and of the Roman peace had become inseparable 
in men’s minds and ever since the fall of the Roman Empire so 
strong had been the yearning for them that the new régime was 
readily accepted. It meant a return of Roman orderliness, 
which was the source of civilization and security, and it meant 
also the Christian religion, which in its turn had been Ro- 
manized. The Carolingians began again what Clovis had at- 
tempted before them, but with more resources and under better 
conditions. They wished to reconstitute the unforgettable Em- 
pire of the West, which in spite of its weaknesses and con- 
vulsions had left imperishable regrets. 


The beginnings of the new monarchy were fortunate indeed, 
20 


GREATNESS OF THE CAROLINGIANS 21 


and bore a singular resemblance, though on a larger scale, to 
the beginnings of Clovis. The Carolingians knew what they 
wanted. There was no hesitation or misstep in their progress. 
At his death in 768, Pippin had pacified and reunited all of 
Gaul, including intractable Aquitaine. The last Arabs left in 
Provence and in Narbonne recrossed the Pyrenees. Instead of 
the country being exposed to invasion, the barbarians and in- 
fidels now put themselves on the defensive. The Pope, threat- 
ened in Rome by the Lombards, was abandoned by the Emperor 
of Constantinople, who was tending to side with the schismatics. 
The head of the Church, therefore, asked for protection from 
the King of the Franks. This is the origin of that close bond 
between the papacy and France. Pippin constituted and guar- 
anteed the temporal power of the popes. Thereby he assured 
the liberty of the spiritual power which thus escaped subjection 
to the Germanic Empire, and France will have a breathing spell 
while the quarrels of the priesthood and the empire are taking 
place. If Pippin was not able to foresee the consequences of 
his act upon European history, he at least knew that through 
this alliance with the Church he was strengthening his dynasty 
within his own country. Outside, France was becoming the 
first of the Catholic powers, “the eldest daughter of the 
Church,” and this was a promise of influence and expansion. 
The new dynasty was supported by the Church as the Church 
was supported by it. Stephen II, the Pope, had renewed the 
consecration which he had given to Pippin. In person he had 
crowned the new king, and this coronation was a consecration. 
Furthermore the Pope had saluted Pippin with the title of 
Patrician, and this with the consent of the Emperor of the East, 
who seemed no longer interested in Italy. The union of the 
Church and the Carolingians was to restore the Empire of the 
West which had become the Empire of Christendom. The title 
of emperor indicates the importance of the rôle of Charles, 
son of Pippin, Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus, Charle- 
magne. It was fortunate for the greatness of Charles that his 
brother Carloman, with whom he had divided the domains of 
Pippin, should have died almost immediately (771). The 


22 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


other Carloman, their uncle, had already stepped down into 
obscurity in favor of Pippin, his older brother. But for these 
fortunate circumstances at the beginning of the two reigns, 
things would have lapsed back again into the divisions of 
Merovingian times, for at the beginning there was dissension 
between Charles and Carloman. The French state will be © 
solidly established only after the time when power shall be 
transmitted from male to male in the order of primogeniture. 
For this it will have to wait until the day of the Capetians. 

However, it was of great advantage to Charlemagne that 
causes of dissension had disappeared after the death of his 
brother. He enjoyed the further advantage of a very long 
reign (771-814). Not only were the intelligence and the will 
of the sovereign of a very high order, but he was able to exer- 
cise them over a period of nearly forty-four years. 

As soon as he became the undisputed master, in 771, Charle- 
magne set himself to his task. His aim was to continue Rome, 
to reconstitute the Empire. 

In Italy he defeats the King of the Lombards and wrests 
from him the Iron Crown (774). He enters Spain (778). 
This is his only check, for the Spanish invasion was a failure 
and ended in the disaster of Roncevaux. Yet the story of this 
disaster and the heroic death of his peer, Roland, are in the 
popular mind to become transglorified. Reshaped in the popu- 
lar imagination, they will furnish the material for the national 
epic of France, The Song of Roland. However, his great idea 
was to force Germany to terms, to overcome and to civilize these 
barbarians and to impose upon them the Roman peace. Of the 
fifty-three campaigns of his reign, eighteen were undertaken 
with the purpose of bringing the Saxons to submission. Charle- 
magne went further than the legions, the consuls, and the em- 
perors of Rome had ever gone. He reached the Elbe. “We 
have,” he proudly said, “reduced the country to a province 
according to the ancient Roman custom.” He was for Germany 
what Cesar had been for Gaul, but the temperaments with 
which he had to reckon were of a very different sort. Wittekind 
was perhaps the hero of Germanic independence, as Vercinge- 


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GREATNESS OF THE CAROLINGIANS 23 


torix had been the hero of Gallic independence. The result 
was very different. Among the Germans there was none of 
that eagerness to adopt the customs of the conqueror which had 
made Gaul Roman. Their idols were broken, but they kept 
their language, and with their language their attitude of mind. 
It was necessary to impose civilization and baptism upon the 
Saxons under penalty of death, whereas the Gauls had a taste 
for Latin civilization and took kindly to Christianity. Ger- 
many has been civilized and Christianized against her will, and 
the success of Charlemagne was immediate and apparent rather 
than lasting and profound. For “Francia,” as France was 
called, the peoples from beyond the Rhine, who never took 
kindly to Latin civilization, remained dangerous neighbors. 
Germany claims Charlemagne as the first of her great national 
sovereigns. To the French this is an enormous bit of nonsense. 
Their so-called Roman Emperors never followed the Roman 
ideal of Charlemagne, that of a united Christendom. 

Charlemagne’s contemporaries surrendered to the illusion that 
Germany had ceased to be dangerous for her neighbors of the 
West. Charlemagne was trying to do what Marcus Aurelius 
and Trajan had done before him: he was protecting Europe 
against the barbarians, including the Slavs and Mongolians, 
and his power was extended as far as the Danube. The Em- 
pire of the West had been restored as he had willed it. He 
lacked only the imperial crown. When he received it at the 
hands of the Pope in the year 800, the people believed that this 
new Augustus had linked up the ages. This restoration, how- 
ever, was not lasting, though the title of emperor will still 
retain such prestige that a thousand years later Napoleon will 
take it to himself as his chief glory. 

To the reconstituted Empire, Charlemagne also wished to be 
the lawgiver. He organized society and government. Feu- 
dalism had sprung up more or less spontaneously in the anarchy 
of the earlier centuries, though how or why we do not know. 
In any case it was not, as many historians believe, something 
which had been invented and brought in by the Germanic in- 
vaders. Charlemagne was the first to give it a definite form. 


24 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


When the Roman state, and later the Merovingian state, had 
been unable to maintain order, the weak and the poor had 
sought aid and protection from the richer and stronger, who in 
exchange had demanded an oath of fidelity. “I shall feed 
and defend you, but you must serve and obey me.” This con- 
tract of lord and vassal had sprung from the nature of things, 
from the distress of a country deprived of authority and ad- 
ministration and racked by civil wars. The Carolingians 
themselves owed their success to the fact that they were power- 
ful patrons who possessed a large following. Charlemagne’s 
idea was to regularize these engagements and to form an ad- 
ministrative, non-hereditary hierarchy which men of plebeian 
origin could enter with the understanding that the supreme lord 
would be the emperor. Charlemagne was keen enough to see 
that feudalism had already struck root too deeply to be sup- 
pressed by decree. He also saw that it might become dangerous 
and beget a parceling out of authority and of the state. He 
wished to dominate what he could not destroy. The sovereign 
himself, in exchange for civil and military services, ceded with 
revocable titles, by way of bénéfice, portions of his domain, thus 
lightening the task of administration and attaching to himself 
another category of vassals. This was the origin of the fief, 
and this entire system, founded upon mutual assistance, was 
very well conceived. But its founders assumed that it would 
remain beneficent, that it would not provoke another period of 
anarchy, that the central power would not become weakened, 
and that the holders of the fiefs would not render themselves 
independent and hereditary. This hope was soon to be proved 
fallacious. 

Furthermore, we must not believe that the reign of Charle- 
magne was a golden age in which men joyously obeyed. The 
need of order and the imperial prestige conferred a dictator- 
ship upon Charles. He made use of it. His military expedi- 
tions, more than one a year, were expensive. ‘They were not 
always followed with enthusiasm. Charlemagne had a heavy 
hand, and he had to deal with more than one traitor like the 
Ganelon of The Song of Roland. When the emperor died, his 


GREATNESS OF THE CAROLINGIANS 25 


prisons were full of great personages whom he had distrusted 
or against whom he had had grievances. His government re- 
sulted in good because it was authoritative. The intellectual 
renaissance which took place under the protection of this vigor- 
ous power has left a lasting memory. Civilization, an inher- 
itance from the antique world, was again rescued. But the 
disintegrating forces will soon threaten it once more. At bot- 
tom the Empire of Charlemagne was fragile because it was 
too vast. It depended too much upon the genius of a single 
man. In a Europe in which nations were beginning to dif- 
ferentiate themselves, it was an anachronism to reéstablish the 
Roman Empire. Charlemagne had had to fix his residence at 
Aix-la-Chapelle, that is to say, half way between the Elbe and 
the Loire, in such a way that he might not be too far from any 
of the points where uprisings might occur. It was not a capital, 
it was a watchtower. A little before his death, which occurred 
in 814, Charlemagne had unhappy presentiments about the fu- 
ture. These did not deceive him. After four generations of 
great men, the vigor and good fortune of the house of Pippin 
were both exhausted. The Emperor Louis was a weakling. 
The people were conscious of all that the heir of Charlemagne 
lacked to continue the work of his ancestors, and Louis “the 
Pious” was ironically dubbed “the Debonair.” As soon as he 
comes to power, the beautiful machine constructed by his 
father ceases to function properly. Revolts and conspiracies 
break out, parties are formed, the bishops themselves take a 
hand. The imperial majesty is no longer respected. On two 
occasions the Debonair is deposed after having undergone the 
humiliation of public penances. Twice restored, his reign ends 
in impotence in the face of his three rebellious sons, who, even 
before his death, take up arms and fight for shares in his 
heritage. Lothaire, the eldest, wished to maintain the unity of 
the Empire. Charles the Bald and Louis the German joined 
forces against him. It was already more than a civil war; it 
was a war of nations. The peace made in the celebrated treaty 
of Verdun, dismembered the Empire (843). It was a strange 
division, since Louis had Germany, Lothaire a long strip of 


26 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


country which extended from the North Sea as far as Italy with 
the Rhone as its limit on the west, while Charles the Bald re- 
ceived the rest of Gaul. 

The unity of the Carolingian Empire was broken. Because 
of this rupture it was to die even more quickly than the Mero- 
vingian monarchy had died. To parcel out kingdoms was the 
incurable error of these dynasties of Frankish origin. The 
division made at Verdun had furthermore a most disastrous 
result in that it created between France and Germany a de- 
batable land and the line-of the Rhine was lost for Gaul. 
From that day forth the old struggle of the two peoples took 
on a new form. France would have to reconquer her former 
frontiers and force back the Germanic pressure. After more 
than a thousand years and numberless wars she has not yet 
succeeded. 

We owe something to that one of the grandsons of Charle- 
magne who received Gaul as his share. Just as Louis the Ger- 
man immediately became a German king, his brother, Charles 
the Bald, likewise was nationalized and became a French king. 
He was earnest in his attempts to bring into his domain the 
eastern provinces. Lothaire’s kingdom was not viable. Al- 
though Charles was unable to keep all of Lotharingia, or Lor- 
raine, he held off the German king as far as possible. Unhap- 
pily he lost himself in a dream of the impossible empire and 
wasted his strength in seeking to reconstitute the domains of 
Charlemagne. But he had not allowed any foreign power to 
establish claims upon France. If therefore he did not succeed 
in reéstablishing the unity of the Empire, he did strengthen 
French unity. This was a nationalistic idea. In order that it 
might thrive, it was well that it had been proclaimed before the 
disappearance of the Carolingian state. This idea was to live 
and later men were to build upon it. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE REVOLUTION OF 987 AND THE COMING 
OF THE CAPETIANS 


Tue tenth century is probably the most atrocious in French 
history. It was worse than anything that had been seen in the 
time of the fall of Rome or during the dying years of the Mero- 
vingians. The daily struggle for existence, the sheer necessity 
of keeping alive, which does not allow us too much time for re- 
gret, was the only thing that kept men from falling into hope- 
less despair. A period of calamities began with the decadence 
of Carolingian authority. The Saracens had appeared again in 
the south. And then another scourge had come. The Normans, 
or Northmen, after having pillaged the coasts, grew bolder, 
mounted the rivers, burned cities and devastated the country. 
The inability of the Carolingians to force back these invaders 
hastened the general dissolution. Henceforth the people ceased 
to count upon the king. Royal power became a fiction; the 
state was bankrupt; no one obeyed it any longer, and men 
sought protection where and as best they could. 

It was then that the great functionaries made themselves in- 
dependent. The feudal system which Charlemagne had regu- 
larized and disciplined freed itself from control and produced 
a throng of sovereignties. Public authority vanished. It is an 
age of social and political chaos and there is no longer any 
Francia or France. A hundred, a thousand local authorities, 
as occasion offered, seized the power. The governor of a prov- 
ince, the governor of a canton, the duke, the count, the slight- 
est personages established themselves in their functions, be- 
queathed them to their children, and acted like veritable sover- 
eigns. It is as if in our days commanders of army corps, pre- 
fects, and subprefects became hereditary. Furthermore, bishops 


and priests took over rights of the state, which had fallen into 
27 


28 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


desuetude. This was the origin of the ecclesiastical seign- 
euries. 

It is an error to believe that the people were hostile to this 
parceling out of sovereignty. All that they asked was that some 
one should protect them. Feudalism, which had been born of 
the old system of patrons and was founded upon reciprocal 
service, grew up as a result of the anarchy and need of govern- 
ment just as in the times of primitive humanity. Let us pic- 
ture to ourselves men whose lives were threatened every day, 
fleeing before the piratical Northmen and bandits of every sort, 
whose houses were burned and whose lands were ravaged. As 
soon as a powerful, enterprising individual presented himself 
and offered to protect lives and property, these men were only 
too happy to give themselves over to him, sometimes even on 
conditions of serfdom which were preferable to the life of a 
hunted beast. What was liberty worth when ruin and death 
were continually threatening everywhere? By rendering 
services, the most highly appreciated of which was the defense 
of public safety, the feudal lord legitimatized his usurpation. 
Sometimes he even promised special guaranties to those who 
recognized his authority. It was in this way that the spirit of 
the provincial and municipal franchises, destined soon to re- 
vive, was kept alive. 

All this took place little by little, spontaneously, without 
method and with the greatest diversity. Thus there sprang up 
a multitude of local monarchies founded upon a consent given 
by distress. These abuses of feudalism were only felt later on 
when conditions had changed, when order began to be restored. 
They developed only as time wore on, when the value of the 
service rendered had diminished and the price that men paid 
for it still remained the same. An aristocracy of power will 
gradually become an aristocracy of privilege. It is what we 
see in our day in connection with the capitalistic régime. Who 
remembers the first stockholders who risked their money in 
order to build the first railways? At that time these men were 
indispensable. Since that time, either by inheritance or pur- 
chase, their rights have passed to others who have the air of 


THE CAPETIANS 29 


parasites. It was the same with the rights of the feudal lords 
and the obligations of vassalage. Transformed and worn down 
by the centuries, feudal rights only disappeared in 1789, which 
would seem to indicate that capitalism has still a considerable 
time to run. But just as the creation of railways by private 
companies was hailed as an advantage and a sign of progress, 
so also in the tenth century it was an advantage to live under 
the shelter of the lord’s stronghold. The keeps which were 
later destroyed with rage were in the first instance built with 
much the same zeal that is shown in constructing fortifications 
against the enemy. 

However, feudalism was to have two consequences, and one 
of these was a very serious danger to the future of France. 
Unity was destroyed. On every hand states were being formed. 
From the greatest to the smallest every one installed himself 
in his domain as upon private property. From this arose 
countless neighborhood wars. And then by inheritance or mar- 
riage, entire provinces might fall to the lot of strangers. This 
was the cause, the occasion, or the pretext of many other wars, 
and in particular of the later Hundred Years’ War. On the 
other hand, states had formed themselves more or less natur- 
ally at the places indicated by the character of the country, 
places where men had community of interest, the habit of visit- 
ing or living together, and sometimes even old traditions in- 
herited from the Gallic tribes. For these reasons, in certain of 
the new provinces some of the dynasties struck deep root. It 
was this fact which was to provide a remedy for the evil. One 
of these families would one day become strong enough to raise 
itself above the others and to reconstitute that French unity 
the idea of which, though obscured, had never been entirely lost. 

During this frightful chaos of the tenth century, it is interest- 
ing to observe how difficult it is for institutions to die and how 
slowly new ones grow up to replace them. The Carolingians 
outwardly maintained the fiction that they held their power by 
virtue of having been elected. They went through a pretense of 
election. Pippin the Short, however, had been elected prince, 
and although the Carolingians had lost public esteem to the 


30 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


point of being deposed for incapacity and cowardice, as hap- 
pened to Charles the Fat (884-887), they nevertheless retained 
that prestige of legitimacy by which the Merovingians had pro- 
longed their sway. On the other hand the progress of the family 
which was destined to replace them was slow. Among the local 
sovereignties which had sprung up everywhere, some were more 
important than others. Dukes of France and of Burgundy, 
Counts of Flanders and of Toulouse—these are the great feudal 
lords. They hold Carolingian royalty in check. When 
brought into contact with it, they act like great intractable elec- 
tors. They speak a republican language. They tell the Caro- 
lingians that “the law is made by the constitution of the king 
and the consent of the people.” Right, justice, and liberty are 
invoked against the monarchy. However, the cleverest and 
most powerful of these leaders founded states in order to insure 
their personal domination, and they perceived the possibility of 
putting themselves in the place of the Carolingians. It is for 
this reason that the principle of election triumphed. It weak- 
ened royalty and authorized ambition. Later, German royalty 
will remain submissive to this electoral régime, while the new 
French monarchy will gain strength through heredity. 

It is impossible to explain the success of the Capetian house 
if one does not keep in mind these political conditions. But, 
like the Carolingians, the Capetians will owe their fortune to 
the services which they rendered. Robert the Strong, the true 
founder of the house, in this time of Charles the Bold, fought 
for ten years against the Normans and died upon the field of 
battle. Robert the Strong was certainly a novus homo, a new 
man of modest origin, for legend asserts that his father was a 
butcher. His son Eudes, while Charles the Fat is covering him- 
self with shame, heroically defends Paris against these same 
adversaries. When Charles the Fat is deposed (887) Eudes is 
a candidate for a sort of consulate for life. As Duke of France 
he was elected to this dignity at Compiègne in 888. It will, 
however, be another hundred years before another descendant 
of Robert, another Duke of France, will really become king. 
After having tried to extend his authority, Eudes realized that 


THE CAPETIANS ol 


the time was not ripe. A legitimist opposition existed in the 
eastern provinces. One of Charlemagne’s descendants was 
fostering it, and the little princes who were alarmed at the 
recent greatness of the Duke of France, yesterday their equal, 
supported the Carolingians in order to consolidate their own 
powers. Eudes thought it wisest not to persist. He was waiting 
for the future. He became reconciled with Charles the Simple 
(898-921) and made terms with him. At Eudes’ death this 
Carolingian was to take over his inheritance and reéstablish his 
throne. This restoration took place as a matter of fact, and 
proved a clever political move. But for the prudence and the 
perspicacity of Eudes, it is probable that the dukes of France 
would have been crushed by a coalition. For nearly a century 
they continued to prepare their accession to the throne. We are 
not sufficiently accustomed to think how much time and how 
many junctures of circumstances are necessary to bring about 
the great events of history. Almost none of these great trans- 
formations take place quickly. They must overcome traditions 
and interests. They must also give proof of persistence. If the 
descendants of Robert the Strong had not maintained them- 
selves solidly in their dominions, and if death had caused gaps 
in their family and left unprotected minors, as for instance in 
the family of Louis XIV, there would have been no Capetian 
monarchy. The contemporaries of the long rivalry between the 
Robertinians and the Carolingians could not have told to which 
side the balance was to swing. At one moment it looked as if 
the heir of Charlemagne would win. By dint of showing too 
much patience, of waiting too long for the psychological mo- 
ment, the Robertinians came near ruining their chances. Hugh 
the Great was content to protect the Carolingians, as the Pippin 
family formerly had hidden itself behind the Do-Nothing 
Merovingians. When this maker of kings died in 956, the 
Carolingian Lothaire was a child, but this child was to become 
an ambitious and active man. 

Hugh the Great left his duchy to Hugh Capet. It was no 
easy matter for him to take over the royal crown. The old 
dynasty seemed to be coming into new life with Lothaire, who 


32 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


wished to take over authority again and reconquer his kingdom. 
He reéstablished his prestige by delivering Paris from a Ger- 
man invasion. If he had lived longer he might have cut off the 
chance of the Capetians. But he died, some say from poison, 
in 986. His son Louis reigned for only a year, and met death 
by accident in a hunt. There was no Carolingian left except a 
distant collateral descendant, Charles of Lorraine. The family 
of Hugh Capet had been waiting for their opportunity ever 
since the death of Eudes (898). Hugh Capet himself had been 
waiting for thirty years and his opportunity had now arrived. 

Things, however, did not go of themselves. Hugh fortunately 
found an ally. Lothaire had had serious difficulties with Adal- 
béron, Archbishop of Rheims, and had accused him of treason. 
The trial was still in progress. Hugh had the innocence of the 
archbishop proclaimed at the Assembly of Senlis, and while the 
Assembly was still sitting, Adalbéron, acquitted, proposed that 
the Duke of France be proclaimed king with a provisional title. 
Another assembly was called at Senlis for the definitive election. 
Adalbéron held that Charles of Lorraine had no rights to the 
throne for various reasons, the most important of which was 
that he was a vassal of the King of Germany. Hugh Capet was 
thus elected by virtue of his being a national prince (987). 

It was, after all, an election. Hugh had made sure of the 
votes and Adalbéron had presented him as the best candidate, 
the one who would be “the defender of the public good and of 
private property.” Hugh neglected no opportunity and no 
argument. Furthermore, for a hundred years past the crown 
had become elective not only in France but in Lotharingia, in 
Italy, and in Germany where it was to remain so. These elec- 
tions had become a habit; that of Hugh, however, was far from 
being unanimous. Several of the great feudal lords, the Counts 
of Flanders, of Troyes, of Toulouse, the Duke of Aquitaine, 
and several archbishops refused to recognize him. It was plain 
that the new dynasty would have to undergo a long struggle 
before reconstituting the unity of the kingdom. 

Born of the feudal régime, the Capetian royalty had its 
strength and its weaknesses. The weakness lay in the fact that 


THE CAPETIANS 33 


France remained divided into numerous sovereignties; the 
strength in the fact that the Capetians, hereditary dukes in 
their domains of l’Ile-de-France, suzerains in Maine, Tou- 
raine, Anjou, were solidly established in the heart of the coun- 
try. In order that they should extend and develop their power 
it was only necessary that they should do away with the elec- 
tion; this was to come about in the simplest possible manner. 
As Hugh Capet had associated his eldest son with him in the 
government, the election of his successor took place in the life- 
time of the king. It was a perfunctory ceremony which in- 
volved no risk. One hundred years had therefore been neces- 
sary before the absurd custom of dividing the kingdom had 
been abandoned, and many years were still to be necessary be- 
fore the hereditary principle entirely triumphed over the elec- 
tive principle. The succession from male to male in order of 
primogeniture, a step which was unnoticed by their contem- 
poraries, was to permit the new house to reconstitute France. 

The good sense of the Capetians, which with rare exceptions 
was to be the dominant quality of their race, was to be very 
useful in this long task. ‘Render service”: this had been the 
motto of the house since the time of Robert the Strong. To 
advance prudently, step by step; to consolidate their acquisi- 
tions; to keep careful accounts; to refuse to listen to the 
promptings of excessive ambition in chimerical enterprises, 
this was another trait. They also possessed a bourgeois sense 
of honor not common among princes, and a taste for adminis- 
tration. The common sense of France found itself reflected in 
this well-balanced family which loved its task and was willing 
to learn from experience. It appeared as if the Capetians were 
ever mindful of the faults of their predecessors. The descend- 
ants of Charlemagne from Charles the Bald to Lothaire had 
ruined themselves in attempting to reconstitute the Empire. 
The Germanic emperors likewise possessed this mania. The 
Capetians were realists; they knew exactly what they could do, 
and at the beginning were careful not to arouse unnecessary 
hostility. 

The race of Hugh Capet, after having spent three generations 


34 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


in winning the crown, will rule for eight centuries. The fu- 
ture of France is assured by the coming of a national mon- 
archy. More than a thousand years have passed since Cæsar 
conquered Gaul before we come to this date of 987, one of the 
most important in French history. 

The new dynasty was still very far from strong. When 
Hugh died (996) he had with difficulty succeeded in having his 
title recognized by the great feudal lords, and this title gave 
him only a moral superiority. He had even been forced to de- 
fend his domain against his neighbors. These wars of province 
against province and town against town were one of the un- 
happy results of feudal anarchy. When the Count of Périgord 
had captured the city of Tours, Hugh had a herald call out to 
him, “Who made you Count?’ and he received the reply, “Who 
made you King?” In addition to the hundred years which 
the Robertinians spent in winning the throne, it will take them 
a hundred more before they are entirely established thereupon. 
If among the descendants of Hugh there had been unforeseen 
and premature deaths which would have made the risk of elec- 
tion necessary, and if there had been long reigns which ended 
in senile weakness, with an old man losing contact with his 
contemporaries, the Capetian house would have disappeared. 

France had now found the political instrument for her re- 
generation, but it was to be a very long task. The Capetians 
had no magie wand with which they could cure the effects of 
anarchy. The national territory had been parceled out, and it 
will take centuries to win it back from local sovereignties. The 
absence of any regular government had furthermore caused 
other evils which could not be cured in a day. The collapse of 
the Carolingian monarchy had produced the effects of a revolu- 
tion. All capital had been swallowed up; famines and epi- 
demics would be prolonged into the following century. The 
conditions of life had become so terrible that they gave birth 
to a legend according to which it is said that the men of this 
time were looking for the end of the world and that, believing 
that the year 1000 would never be passed, in a kind of 
general madness they renounced effort and work. This is an 


THE CAPETIANS 35 


exaggeration based on an unwarranted generalization from cer- 
tain passages in old chronicles. Life was nowhere interrupted, 
though men had suffered greatly. The result was a great mys- 
tical movement, a revival of the religious spirit. The Church 
profited thereby in order to impose rules which restricted private 
wars and brigandage. Such was the so-called Truce of God. 
At the same time chivalry had grown up. The duties of the 
man of arms and the honor of the soldier, the germ of these 
ideas existed in feudalism which was founded upon the idea of 
protection. The Church exalted and codified them. This re- 
vival of religious life will soon give birth to the Crusades, which 
is to be a movement of the very first importance. The West had 
lived in a state of isolation, shut in by the narrow confines of 
its material and political misfortunes. The Crusades will give 
it new life by reéstablishing contact with the Mediterranean and 
Oriental worlds, with the remains of antiquity and another 
civilization which were not to be forgotten. 


CHAPTER V 


FROM THE DEATH OF HUGH CAPET TO 
THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR 


Tue Capetian house made slow progress. For a hundred 
years it is to cut but a small figure. Its domain was limited. 
With Paris as a center,-its principal cities were Orléans, 
Etampes, Melun, Dreux, Poissy, Compiègne and Montreuil- 
sur-Mer. This is about all that the king possessed in his own 
right, and there were many castles even within these lines 
which housed lords who refused to submit. As feudal chief 
and Duke of France, the king had as direct vassals the Counts 
of Blois, of Anjou and of Maine, and as indirect vassals the 
Breton Counts of Mans and of Rennes. Eight great fiefs nomi- 
nally dependent upon the crown, but in fact independent, di- 
vided the rest of the territory, which was so closely hemmed 
in on the east by the Germanic Empire that it did not every- 
where even reach the Rhone, so that neither Lyons nor Bar- 
le-Duc nor Cambrai, to mention but these cities, were included. 

The eight great fiefs were those of Flanders, Normandy, 
Burgundy, Guyenne, Gascony, Toulouse, Gothia (Narbonne, 
Nimes), and Barcelona. The Capetian suzerainty over these 
duchies and marches was the result of the inheritance from the 
Carolingians. It was a juridical title which had still to be 
made good and which was not to be made good in all cases. As 
a matter of fact the great vassals were masters in their own 
domains. 

The entire superiority of the Capetians consisted in the 
royal dignity, the anointment at consecration which brought 
about alliance with the Church, and a vague tradition of unity 
personified by the king. To this they added the advantage, 
which will only be perceived in the long run, of residence in 


the center of the country. In short, the king counted for but 
36 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 37 


little, even for his direct vassals as for instance the counts of 
Anjou, from whose house was to spring the ill-fated dynasty 
of the Plantagenets, which will one day endanger France. 

The authority of the earlier Capetians was, therefore, largely 
a moral authority. It was raised to a high degree in the suc- 
cessor of Hugh. Robert the Pious (996-1031) was deeply 
conscious of the religious character of royalty. His political 
task was simplified by rivalries which brought the provincial 
sovereigns into conflict with each other, and Robert, priest and 
king, did not end as had done that son of Charlemagne, Louis 
the Pious, surnamed the Debonair. After Robert, the first 
Henry (1031-1060) and-the first Philip (1060-1108) succeeded 
in maintaining themselves and even in somewhat increasing 
their domain. A modest expansion was taking place. They 
seem already to have developed a European consciousness. 
Henry I married the daughter of the Grand Duke of Kief, who 
claimed descent from the kings of Macedonia. It was in this 
way that the name of Philip entered into the house of France. 
But Philip the First had so little power that the lord of 
Montlhéry caused him many sleepless nights. 

During these first three undistinguished reigns there were 
to occur two events of immense importance, the conquest of 
England by the Duke of Normandy and the Crusades. 

In order to simplify our narrative, we have not yet mentioned 
what happened in 911, the time of the great calamities in the 
Neustrian region, which was the most exposed to invasion by 
sea. Incapable of resisting the Normans, the Carolingian 
emperor had ceded to their chief, Rollo, the province which 
became Normandy. We see taking place there a phenomenon 
which was repeated many times during this period of French 
history. The conqueror was assimilated by the conquered. In 
a short time the new dukes of Normandy and their companions 
ceased to be pirates. They became Christians, married wives 
in the country, spoke its language, and as they had the habit 
of authority and discipline, governed very well. The new 
duchy became vigorous and prosperous. The Normans added 
a new element, an active principle to the national character. 


38 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Always inclined to distant adventure, they set out to found a 
kingdom in Southern Italy and Sicily, bearing afar the name 
of France. But nearer to them, another conquest tempted the 
Normans—that of England into which their influence had 
already penetrated. The single battle of Hastings delivered 
the island to William the Conqueror in 1066. England, which 
up to that time had counted for but little, and was regarded 
as a poor, still primitive country, sparsely inhabited, now en- 
tered into history and was singularly to complicate that of 
France. Against these two forces, Germany and England, it 
will be necessary for France to defend herself, to maintain her 
independence and her equilibrium. This is still the case to-day. 

One can readily imagine that the King of France must have 
been somewhat worried to see the Duke of Normandy increase 
his power to this formidable degree and having become a king 
in England, have a base at London and another at Rouen. 
England at first was like a colony of France. William, with 
the barons, soldiers, and adventurers who from all the provinces 
had come in answer to his call, had carried over into the island 
the French language and customs. However, a new danger was 
to begin with his Conquest. The Capetians were to have peace 
only on the day when they were to take Normandy back again. 
In the meantime they profited by every occasion to intervene 
in the quarrels of the Normans and to cause their dukes as 
many difficulties as possible. 

The other event was favorable. The Crusades acted as a 
counterirritant to the conquest of England. They relieved the 
feudal congestion. By directing energies and combative in- 
stincts toward a religious and idealistic enterprise, Pope Urban 
IT and Peter the Hermit, the monk who preached the Crusades, 
rendered an immense service to the young royal house. If the 
Pope had any political idea, it was probably directed against 
Germany with which he was in conflict. As all Christendom, 
including even the most faithful partisans of the Germanic Em- 
peror, obeyed the voice of the Pope, it was a victory for the 
Church over the Empire. In the meantime the Capetian, whose 
modesty kept him apart from these major quarrels, profited by 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 39 


this displacement of forces which the delivery of the Holy 
Land was to cause. 

It happened that at the moment of the First Crusade, the 
most important of them all (1096), Philip, the King of France, 
was having difficulties with the Church because of an irregular 
second marriage. He did not, therefore, in any way partici- 
pate in the expedition, while all of French chivalry was setting 
forth. Nowhere in Christendom had the enthusiasm for the 
Holy War been greater than in France. This was so true that 
the Crusade appeared to the peoples of the Orient as a French 
enterprise. As a result there came to France a new prestige 
which was to last through the succeeding centuries. Further- 
more, many of the crusaders disappeared. Others, who in 
order to equip themselves had mortgaged their lands, were 
ruined. This weakened the feudal seigneuries, and there were 
two classes who profited thereby: the bourgeoisie of the towns 
and the royal house. 

Since the destruction and desolation of the tenth century, 
wealth had been restored and society had tended to become 
more fixed. In the preceding centuries the disappearance of 
order and safety had driven the small and the weak to give 
themselves over to powerful or energetic personages in ex- 
change for protection. Circumstances had changed. That the 
feudal régime had its beneficent side is shown by the fact that 
it was in the shelter of the castles that a middle class had 
sprung up again through its industry and thrift. This middle 
class later became keenly conscious of the abuses of feudalism. 
A position of dependence was quite as irksome to it as were the 
little wars, the brigandage, and the exactions. These towns- 
men had sought the protection of the lords in order to be safe 
from brigands and pirates. As soon as this protection was less 
necessary they sought civil and political rights. Prosperity 
brought with it the taste for liberty and the means for acquiring 
it. What is called the communal revolution was, like all revo- 
lutions, a result of the increase of wealth; for wealth creates 
force, and it is only when men begin to be sure of the morrow 
that liberty begins to have value for them. 


40 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


From this fact were to result new relationships between the 
protectors and their protégés. The bourgeoisie of the towns had 
formed associations according to their trades. By a natural 
law which we see repeating itself in our time, these syndicates 
or guilds came to play a political rôle. These corporations, 
joined together, constituted the commune which obtained its 
liberty sometimes by violence, sometimes by agreement or pur- 
chase. The lord being away at the Crusades, the bourgeois 
became bolder. This movement came near begetting another 
sort of anarchy, that of the feudal bourgeoisie, for the com- 
munes naturally had the same idea of independent authority 
as the lords whose places they took. But for the royal house, 
ane would have seen a host of little republican seigneuries, and 
the parceling out of sovereignty which characterizes the feudal 
régime would have persisted in another form. This is what 
happened in Flanders, in Germany, and in Italy, where free 
cities and republics began to swarm. In France the interven- 
tion of the king prevented the communal movement from tak- 
ing an anarchical turn. 

This movement, furthermore, took on various aspects, and 
differed in various parts of the country as did the world of 
those days in which everything possessed a local character, 
where conditions changed from province to province and from 
town to town. The communes were founded peacefully in the 
south where the municipal customs of Roman Gaul survived. 
There was more difficulty in the north. According to the times 
and circumstances, they either succeeded or failed or resulted 
in compromises. There was no unity or doctrine in the move- 
ment. The inhabitants of the commune formed alliances wher- 
ever they could, sometimes with veritable feudal brigands. 
The Capetian at the beginning followed only the policy of op- 
portunism. He supported the commune at Amiens because 
there his adversary, Enguerrand de Coucy, was the same as 
theirs. He repressed it at Laon because the commune of this 
city was allied with his enemy, Thomas de Marle, against the 
bishop who was a friend of the king. 

This king, the first of the Capetians who had borne the name 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 41 


of Louis, had been careful to attach himself to the Carolingian 
tradition by significantly calling himself Louis VI. With him 
the active period of the Capetian monarchy begins (1108). 
The time had come. If an apathetic prince had allowed it to 
pass, the future of France would have suffered seriously. Louis 
VI, surnamed the Fat, was energetic and had one simple guid- 
ing principle: he wished to be master in his own domains. He 
employed his military police to clear out the country. This 
was the program which his father had indicated to him when 
he pointed out the castle of Montlhéry as the first obstacle to 
be overthrown. The ambition of the King of France in the 
beginning of the twelfth century was to be able to travel with- 
out molestation from Paris to Orléans. 

These unambitious operations nevertheless cost him great 
effort, and in the process of carrying them out, Louis the Fat 
came gradually to ally himself with the communal movement.. 
In his own cities, when there was disorder, he repressed it or 
kept it within careful limits. He also began to organize the 
administration of the kingdom, being careful to keep authority 
within his own hands. The lessons of experience were not lost 
upon him, and he was unwilling to risk creating a new feu- 
dalism. For this reason he chose as officials people of undis- 
tinguished birth who were devoted to him, and he frequently 
shifted them about. Following his example the kings of France 
were to surround themselves with non-nobles who kept good 
accounts and were good lawyers. His confidential man of 
affairs, Suger, a simple monk, will be the typical minister of 
royalty. 

It is in this manner, as a result of circumstances, that the 
Capetians, sprung from the feudal régime, became its de- 
stroyers. They were forced either to dominate it or be domi- 
nated by it. But all this happened without a doctrine or a 
system. If the King of France was unwilling to have great 
independent feudal lords within his own domain, he never- 
theless strongly insisted upon his suzerainty even over the great 
lords outside his narrow kingdom. A feudal right was there 
at stake. If the vassals of the king violated their obligation, 


42 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the vassals of these same feudal lords could, in turn, violate 
their obligations. That is why the Capetians were able to 
summon before their court of justice princes more powerful 
than themselves, like the Plantagenets. In short, the King of 
France retained that part of feudalism which was advantageous 
to himself. It was a commodity for export only. In the 
interior, he relied upon the great moral force of the time, the 
Church, whose invincibly Roman tradition led it to support 
monarchy, that is to say, unity. He also relied upon public 
opinion, upon the people who found protection in his authority. 
In this way the Capetian policy became clearer and better de- 
fined. Its aim was the nation and the state. Above all, this 
policy was national and the king already personified France. 
This became apparent when the German emperor in 1124 
attempted another invasion. From all parts of the country 
vassals and militia came and took their stand about the king 
and the standard of Saint Denis. The German emperor was 
not expecting any such resistance. Although he had already. 
started towards Rheims he turned back and abandoned the 
expedition. 

With the return of order and the intellectual stimulus of 
the Crusades, the taste for knowledge and for ideas had been 
revived. It is a great error to believe that this century was 
one of docile faith and obedience to the master. It was the 
century of Abelard and his fabulous celebrity, of philosophic 
controversies, of intellectual audacity. Heresies reappeared 
and found Saint Bernard to combat them. The crusade against 
the Albigenses was near at hand. There were also movements 
of revolt and, during the early part of the reign, Suger had to 
use a heavy hand. The men of that time were moved by the 
same passions that move us. 

Under Louis the Fat, the kingdom had grown considerably. 
The reign of his successor came near ruining everything. 
Louis VII (1137-1180) had made a very good marriage. His 
wife, Eleanor of Guyenne, had brought him as a dowry all of 
the southwest. By this marriage, France at a single step was 
extended to the Pyrenees. Husband and wife, however, could 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 43 


not agree, and Louis VII seems to have had serious grievances 
against his queen. However, this stormy union was annulled 
only fifteen years later when Suger, the good counselor, had 
disappeared. The divorce was a catastrophe. Although Eleanor 
was no longer young, suitors were not lacking, and she brought 
her dowry to Henry Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. It was one 
of the worst consequences of the dismemberment of the state 
through the feudal régime that a territory, like property, fol- 
lowed the titular holder of the fief, whether man or woman. 
In this case the result was unusually serious. As chance would 
have it, the Count of Anjou soon fell heir also to the crown 
of England (1154). The Plantagenet found himself at the 
head of a kingdom which with his Angevine domains included 
Great Britain and Normandy, and as a result of the marriage 
with Eleanor, included also Guyenne, Auvergne, and Aqui- 
taine. Compressed between this state and the Germanic Em- 
pire, what would become of the Kingdom of France? It is 
surprising that it was not crushed. The end of the reign of 
Louis VII was spent in an attempt to keep the pincers open 
and to defend the provinces of the south against an Anglo- 
Norman invasion. A great struggle, the Hundred Years’ War, 
had begun. A truce was to come only with Saint Louis. 
During these hundred years they did, of course, not fight 
every day, and other events, like crusades, for example, inter- 
rupted the war. A very small number of men sufficed to carry 
on campaigns in which the taking of a castle decided the fate 
of a province. Furthermore, the fighting was carried on only 
by the knights, who were more or less the professional soldiers 
of feudalism. When levies of communal militia were raised 
they were only partial and local and for a very short time. 
There was nothing which remotely resembled even modern con- 
scription and mobilization. The men of that time would have 
been very much surprised to learn that their successors of the 
twentieth century would believe themselves free when by mil- 
lions they were to be constrained to make war for five years. 
When militia were raised in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 


44 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


turies, it was for a limited period beyond which it was im- 
possible to hold them. 

To carry on this struggle against the Anglo-Norman state 
there appeared a very great prince, the greatest that the Cape- 
tian stock had produced since Hugh Capet. Philip Augustus 
(1180-1223) was extraordinarily precocious, and he became 
king before reaching man’s estate, for he was born late of the 
second marriage of Louis VII. He possessed to an unusual 
degree powers of will, shrewdness, good sense, and moderation. 
As opposed to those two extravagant adventurers, Richard the 
Lion-hearted and Jean sans Terre (Lackland), the sons of 
Eleanor and Henry Plantagenet, Philip Augustus represents 
realism, patience, opportunism. If he went to the Crusades, 
it was only because it was proper that he should. He came 
back at the earliest possible moment to his own kingdom, which 
interested him far more, leaving the pursuit of adventure to 
others and, in order to advance his own affairs, profiting by 
the absence and captivity of Richard the Lion-hearted. In 
Philip Augustus we already find some of the traits of Louis 
XI. It was, in short, a reign of astute policy and sound ad- 
ministration. This is why the imagination took refuge in 
legend. Literature carried men’s minds back to more poetic 
times. The Middle Age itself was homesick for a past which 
did not seem to be prosaic but which in its own time had been 
so. This seemingly more poetic age was the period celebrated 
by the chansons de gestes and the romances of chivalry. The 
century of the Crusades, of Saladin and Lusignan, which saw 
Baldwin Emperor of Constantinople, this age of Philip Augus- 
tus seemed flat to its contemporaries. They took refuge in 
dreams of Lancelot of the Lake and the Knights of the Round 
Table. It will be four hundred years before in another age, 
the Renaissance, Tasso, trying to escape from his own time, 
will discover the poetry of the Crusades, 

Philip Augustus had only one idea: to drive the Plantagenets 
out of the country. It would be necessary to succeed before the 
German emperor, who was busy in Italy, could turn his atten- 
tion against France. The Capetian saw the storm coming. 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 45 


However, the struggle against the Plantagenets was long drawn 
out. It made no progress; it dragged on into sieges and skirm- 
ishes in which the King of France was far from always having 
the advantage. Henry, whom the marriage with Eleanor of 
Guyenne had rendered so powerful, was dead. Richard the 
Lion-hearted, after so many romantic adventures, had been 
struck by an arrow before the Chateau of Châlus; but neither 
on one side nor the other had there so/far been any definite 
result. John Lackland came upon the scene. His madness and 
cruelty offered Philip Augustus the opportunity for a bold 
stroke. John was accused of several crimes, and especially 
of having assassinated his nephew, Arthur of Brittany. Insane 
cruelty seemed to disqualify this member of the English royal 
house. Philip Augustus stepped in as defender of right and 
justice. John was his vassal. It was decreed that John’s 
domains had been confiscated because of his immorality and 
unworthiness. Feudal law and public opinion were with Philip 
Augustus. He rapidly took possession of the confiscated lands 
and encountered only a feeble resistance. As a result of this 
important fact, Normandy ceased to be English, France could 
breathe freely, and in turn Maine, Anjou, Touraine and Poitou 
fell into the hands of the king. These were great steps toward 
French unity. The results of the divorce of Henry VII were 
being neutralized. 

Philip Augustus was pressing for a decision with the allies 
whom John Lackland had found in Flanders, when unfortu- 
nately the German Emperor Otho came to the conclusion that 
France was growing too rapidly. A coalition was formed among 
the dissatisfied and the greedy. The Plantagenet, the German 
emperor, and feudal lords jealous of the Capetian power united 
to constitute a terrible national danger. If we could reconsti- 
tute the thought of the French in the year 1214, we would un- 
doubtedly find a state of mind quite like that which existed in 
the French wars of liberation. The invasion of the foreigners 
produced the same electrical effect which will be seen later in 
1792 and the mobilization of 1914. In his hour of danger, 
Philip Augustus did not fail to align moral force upon his 


46 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


side. He already had that of the Church. Pope Innocent III, 
the adversary of the German emperor, was his best European 
ally. The agreement made in an earlier time between Pippin 
and Charlemagne, continued to work for the good of France. 
Philip Augustus also made an appeal to other sentiments. It 
would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he called upon 
Frenchmen to take up the struggle against autocracy and the 
feudal reactionaries who were in league with the foreigner. 
This is more than indicated in the words which legend assigns 
to him on the eve of the battle of Bouvines (1214): “I wear 
the crown, but I am a man like yourselves,” and furthermore, 
“All of you ought to be kings, and you are so in fact, for 
without you I am unable to govern.” The militia had there- _ 
fore followed him with enthusiasm, and after the victory which 
delivered France there was rejoicing throughout the country. 
If it is impossible to assign a date for the birth of national 
sentiment in France, it seems in any case to have been strik- 
ingly evident on this occasion. 

This reign ended in a period of prosperity. Philip Augustus 
loved order, economy, good administration. He was satisfied 
with having broken the Anglo-Norman power, with having 
added to French territory the provinces of the west, and with 
the restitution of Normandy. He was careful not to go too 
fast or to abuse the victory of Bouvines. His son, Louis VIII, 
had already set out for the conquest of England. Philip 
Augustus allowed him to leave, without himself taking part in 
this adventure, which, though it began well, was to end badly. 
He preferred to organize his domains prudently and method- 
ically, strengthening the royal authority and developing through 
his system of bazllis (bailiffs) an administrative order which 
up to that time had existed only in embryo. He established a 
system of finance, and in short provided the state with its prin- 
cipal organs of administration. The society of the Middle 
Age, which was to develop under Saint Louis, was already 
formed under Philip Augustus. Some of the characteristics 
which will mark the French state up to the present time and 
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CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 47 


be more clearly evident. It is plain that Philip Augustus, the 
ally of the Church,’ cared no more for theocracy than for feu- 
dalism. If he is quite willing that the Pope should make and 
unmake emperors in Germany, he refuses to allow any inter- 
ference with the independence of his own crown. In the interior 
he defends himself against what we would call the encroachments 
of the clergy. In this grandfather of Saint Louis we already 
see some of the traits of Philip the Fair. The greatest stigma 
which is usually attached to this great reign is the crusade 
against the Albigenses. What was the Albigensian heresy? It 
was a political movement. It is possible to see in it what will 
appear in Protestantism, a manifestation of the revolutionary 
spirit. There have always been anarchical elements in France. 
From age to age, there will always be found these violent revo- 
lutionary uprisings, followed sooner or later by equally strong 
reactions. The revolution and reaction have always taken the 
form of a religious war, of a struggle between conflicting ideas. 

Like the Protestants, the Albigenses held that they were 
purifying Christianity. They were in revolt against the ecclesi- 
astical hierarchy and against society. If their contemporaries 
may be believed, their heresy came from the Bulgarian Bogo- 
miles who might almost be called the Bolsheviks of the Middle 
Age. It is not impossible that ideas circulated then as rapidly 
as they do in our own time. It is also to be noticed that 
Languedoc and the Cévennes, strongholds in which Protes- 
tantism will later find missionary workers, were the seats of 
the Albigensian sect. 

The Albigensian heresy sprang up under the toleration of 
local feudalism and continued to increase to the time when 
the crusade against it was preached throughout France in the 
name of order as much as in the name of the faith. As soon 
as Simon de Montfort and his crusaders set out, the move- 
ment changed its character. It became the struggle of the 
north against southern feudalism and the Toulousan dynasty. 
The enemy was the Count of Toulouse quite as much as the 
heresy, and the north triumphed. With his marked political 


1 His kingdom was, however, twice laid under interdict in 1193 and 1203. 


48 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


sagacity, Philip Augustus refused to intervene in person and 
assume the odium of repression. He had little taste for cru- 
sades, and had he taken part in this one, it would have ruined 
the chances of the monarchy in southern France. Feudalism 
in the south never recovered from the results of this struggle. 
However, the bitterness engendered did not affect the Cape- 
tians or interfere with their task of unification. 

At his death in 1223, Philip Augustus left not only an en- 
larged France freed from danger without, but he had also re- 
established the finances and given the country a more orderly 
administration. The monarchy had become so strong that he 
could neglect the precaution which had been observed by his 
predecessors: he did not take the trouble to associate his eldest 
son on the throne with him. This son, Louis VIII, succeeded 
him quite naturally, and no one called for an election. That 
the monarchy had been elective at the beginning seemed to 
have been forgotten. From consuls for life, the Capetians had 
become hereditary kings. It had taken two centuries and a 
half, since the time of Hugh Capet, to bring about the triumph 
of the principle of heredity which was to be of immense im- 
portance. France had a regular government at a time when 
the emperors of Germany were falling one after another and 
at a time when the authority of the King of England was held 
in check by the Magna Charta of the barons. 

The time had come when the French monarchy no longer 
had to take thought about the successor to the throne. The 
reign of Louis VIII was short (1223-1226) and was spent in 
continuing the work of his father against the Toulousan dynasty 
powerful in the south and tke English who were still installed 
in the southwest. When Louis died in 1226, his eldest son 
was eleven years old, and minorities have always been a source 
of danger to an hereditary house. This one was to prove no 
exception. The reign of Saint Louis, Louis IX, began with a 
conspiracy much like the Fronde under Louis XIV, but it was 
all the more dangerous since its leaders were still powerful 
feudal lords. The malcontents who had been defeated at Bou- 
vines by Philip Augustus were eager to take their revenge and 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 49 


get rid of the Capetian unifier. Blanche of Castile, the widow 
of Louis VIII, had been appointed regent, and they contested 
her regency. They sought to dishonor her; they not only re- 
proached her with being a stranger, but accused her of infidelity 
to her consort. They were even ready to place the crown upon 
another head. Fortunately, this conspiracy found no support 
outside of France, and the energy and ability of Blanche of 
Castile were sufficient to dissolve it. But the difficulties and 
the dangers had been serious. On two occasions attempts to 
abduct the young king had nearly succeeded. It was the 
fidelity of the bourgeoisie of Paris that saved him and spared 
France from again falling into anarchy. This was the first 
victory of the idea of legitimacy, an idea which already had 
strong opponents. It had also been called, with little exaggera- 
tion, the First Restoration. 

The regency of the mother of Saint Louis was as difficult 
and as brilliant as was to be that later regency of Anne of 
Austria, mother of Louis XIV. She not only defended the 
crown against the malcontents, but added the southern province 
of Languedoc to the kingdom, thus gathering in, thanks to the 
prudent abstention of Philip Augustus, the results of the war 
against the Albigenses. In the west, however, Pierre Maucler, 
Count of Brittany, a renegade Capetian who had turned con- 
spirator, had called in the English to assist him. He was 
likewise defeated, and royal garrisons occupied the principal 
strongholds of Brittany. The making of France was to be a 
long and difficult task. 

Louis IX reached his majority in 1236. He had already 
married Marguerite of Provence. This marriage had had a 
political purpose and had united another province to France. 
It was, however, to be much more than a mere marriage of 
policy. The sentiments of husband and wife were much the 
same, and the saintly king was to have at his side a veritable 
saint. If this incomparable phenomenon is unique, it never- 
theless follows a sort of rule. With but slight exaggeration it 
might be said that the reign of Saint Louis comes in as a 
reaction after the rationalism of Philip Augustus. In the 


50 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


story of the Capetian house we have already seen Robert the 
Pious succeed Hugh Capet. Saint Louis represents a return 
to the idea of the priest-king. He is in harmony with his 
time, which is that of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and character- 
ized by a revival of the Christian faith. In somewhat the 
same way it might be said that after the rationalistic encyclo- 
pedists of the eighteenth century we shall see a religious revival 
with Chateaubriand and the young Romantics. 

But Louis IX is no longer merely a pious Robert who spends 
his time in his chapel. The monarchy has acquired duties, 
traditions and momentum, and Saint Louis will continue the 
work of his predecessors. He will however add something 
which it had never possessed before. Up to his time the Cape- 
tian house had been prosaic and matter-of-fact. He will glorify 
that house and give it spiritual grandeur. Though none of his 
successors will equal him, the spiritual elevation of his life 
and work will leave an aureole about the family of the Cape- 
tians. Most of the other royal or imperial houses of Europe 
had eagles, lions, leopards, or some sort of carnivorous animal 
as their emblem, while the house of France had chosen three 
modest flowers. Saint Louis was the justification of the lilies. 

The religious fervor which drew him into the Crusades was 
something new among the Capetians. In his case, however, 
it did not exclude courage or finesse or the sense for politics. 
He knew when to strike and how to hit hard. At the battle of 
Taillebourg in 1242, he broke the last offensive attempt of the 
Plantagenets, and it has often been commented upon that when 
he set out to deliver Jerusalem, like Bonaparte, he first went 
straight to Egypt, the key to Palestine and Syria. 

This expedition was unsuccessful. It was the end of the 
Crusades, and the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem could no 
longer be saved. Saint Louis was captured by the Mamelukes 
after knightly combats and was forced to pay a ransom to 
recover his freedom. His aged mother, who was alarmed by 
the anarchy of the Shepherds, one of those mystical religious 
revolutions which seem to return periodically, was calling him 
back to France. However, the bourgeoisie of the towns took 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 51 


over responsibility for stamping out the movement, and at the 
return of Louis IX order had been restored. 

His vow, his crusade and his defeat had purified his soul. 
He was to make justice and morality the basis of his govern- 
ment. This has not always been understood. Even in his 
own time there were not lacking people who regarded him as 
somewhat fanatical. When, after the victory of Taillebourg, 
he decided to give back to the King of England magnificent 
French provinces in the southwest, there was much indignation. 
Even posterity has wondered at this. Louis IX himself ex- 
plained this restitution by quite natural reasons: he wished to 
put an end to the state of war between himself and his cousin 
of England and to bring about a true pacification. As a mat- 
ter of fact, Louis IX was making a compromise with Henry 
III. If he restored provinces to Henry, Henry renounced his 
claims upon those which he had lost, notably Normandy, which 
was important, as the Plantagenets had, up to this time, re- 
fused to consider as definitive the annexations of Philip Augus- 
tus. Furthermore, Henry III recognized the overlordship of 
the King of France to Guyenne and the retroceded territories. 
In other words it was a bargain, an arrangement, which was 
better than a war. The thinking of Saint Louis was political 
and not mystic. He merely carried to a higher degree than 
the other Capetians the tendency to have the rights of the 
matter on their side. He was certainly mistaken if he believed 
that this would forever insure peace with England, but noth- 
ing allows us to attribute this thought to him. It was a truce, 
a provisional arrangement. By taking care to demand from 
Henry III the homage of a vassal, Saint Louis indicated that 
he was taking thought for the future. He was renouncing no 
rights, and it would be all the better if France could some day 
peacefully free herself from the English. 

In internal affairs also, the reign of Saint Louis was one of 
justice and not of weakness. He was a just judge, but he 
knew very well how to send even barons to the gallows. Order 
is heaven’s first law, and Louis sought law and order. He had 
friends in the legal profession and carried on their work of 


52 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


attempting to temper law with Christianity and humanity. 
“A battle is not a way of establishing a right,” he said in re- 
fusing to sanction trials by combat, the so-called Judgments of 
God. He will be remembered by his people as a royal judge 
seated under his oak tree at Vincennes, meting out justice. 
But he was not content merely to provide an example; he also 
organized tribunals and procedure. He gave the “parliament” 
a higher jurisdiction than the other courts possessed, and it is 
under his reign that this court of appeals and of justice takes 
on its principal functions, and the parliament is to play a 
most important rôle in French history. By bringing unity 
into the law, Louis will unite the nation. He will give added 
strength to the state by eliminating, little by little, the rights 
of feudal justice, and this process of unification will continue 
up to the time when the parliament, having become a political 
power, will be a danger for the monarchy. 

If Saint Louis reformed judicial procedure, he also sought 
to reform society. He urged the liberation of the serfs and 
extended the rights of the bourgeoisie. Perhaps his most im- 
portant work in this line was his organizing of the “corpora- 
tions,” the guilds. In the celebrated Livre des métiers, or 
Book of the Trades, the existence and the rights of the working 
man are to receive protection in a “Christian social order.” 
If the figure of Saint Louis was so soon to be idealized in story 
and legend, it is not only because the king was good, just and 
charitable; it 1s because, as his chronicler Joinville says, under 
his rule through righteous administration France had become 
more prosperous and the way of life easier and more humane. 
He will bequeath to the Capetian monarchy and to France 
enduring renown. 

This pious king must not, however, be mistaken for a cler- 
icalist. His monarchy was not a theocracy any more than 
was that of Philip Augustus. Neither the king nor the nobility 
allowed themselves to be enslaved by the clergy, for this would 
have shown a lack of common sense. Their interests differ 
continually, and conflicts and competition are bound to arise. 
The piety and even the saintliness of Louis IX made him more 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 53 


independent than another might have been in his relations with 
the Church, because his faith was above suspicion. Michelet 
notes with reason that, if there had been no Saint Louis, the 
later Philip the Fair would never have dared to enter into 
controversy with the Pope. The death of Louis IX was like 
what we might expect to find in some illuminated religious 
manuscript or some stained glass window. The news from 
the East was bad. The Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem was 
going to pieces. Louis did not wish to see this work of two 
centuries abolished. But the time of enthusiasm for crusades 
was past. This time his old chronicler and admirer, Joinville, 
did not go with him, and thanked God that he had been allowed 
to remain at home. But with Saint Louis, the Crusades were 
to come to an end. His brother, Charles of Anjou, who had 
conquered Sicily and who had purely political ends in view, 
directed him toward Tunis, opposite the Sicilian coast. On 
his arrival at the site of ancient Carthage, he fell ill with the 
plague, and died repeating the name of Jerusalem. 

At his death (1270) the Capetians had been reigning for 
nearly three hundred years. There has been much progress, 
but the most important fact is, perhaps, that the French state, 
whose principal characteristics are now established, has begun 
to be of importance outside. It has come forth victorious from 
its struggle with the Plantagenets, the German menace has 
been dispelled, and both England and Germany are now in the 
throes of revolution. When he died, Saint Louis left to his 
son, besides some characteristic “teachings,” an excellent po- 
litical situation which was, however, to undergo some unfore- 
seen developments. 

History is complex, since events are continually emerging 
one from another. The last crusade of Louis IX had cost the 
lives of many princes and princesses. Many domains had, 
therefore, been inherited by his successor, Philip JII. The 
monarchy, since the time of Louis VIII, had applied a system 
which, if it possessed advantages, possessed also an element of 
danger. When provinces had recently been reunited to France, 
they were given as appanages, independent domains, to Cape- 


54 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


tian princes in order to make some compensation to the younger 
sons and to avoid those jealousies and family quarrels which 
had ruined the dynasty of the Plantagenets. It was thought 
that this method of transition would somewhat appease popu- 
lations who were proud of their positions as more or less inde- 
pendent districts and accustom them gradually to royal admin- 
istration, at the same time constituting about the kingdom, 
properly so called, confederated principalities which sooner or 
later would revert to the crown when the male line of the 
princely house became extinct. This plan was successful only 
in part, as often happens in politics, and a few of those who 
received appanages were ungrateful and intractable. But in 
any case, the son of Saint Louis immediately came into several 
inheritances, including that of Toulouse. However, the Count 
of Toulouse had vassals who refused to recognize the suzerainty 
of the King of France and they called in the King of Aragon 
to assist them. Philip ITI, who in his campaigns was to win 
the name of the Bold, was called upon to defend the frontier 
of the Pyrenees, and Spain became a factor in French national 
history. <A little later the succession to Navarre again set the 
King of France at odds with Spain. The southern frontiers 
of France could not be reached without conflict with Castile 
and Aragon. 

At the same time other circumstances had been calling Philip 
IIT into Italy. We have already seen that Charles of Anjou, 
the brother of Saint Louis, had become interested in Mediter- 
ranean politics and had conquered Sicily. He had now been 
made king of Naples and Sicily. He had been called in by a 
French Pope, who was eager to put an end to the Ghibelline, 
that is to say, the German influence in Italy. Charles of Anjou 
had accepted, after long hesitation on the part of Louis IX, 
and his success seemed to be complete. To end German in- 
trigues, he had young Conrad, the heir of the Hohenstaufens, 
condemned to death. Heine was to say six hundred years later 
that the Germans had not yet forgiven France for this execu- 
tion. 

The revolt of the Sicilians, known in history as the Siciliar 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 55 


Vespers (1282) started the decline of the French Kingdom of 
Naples. France believed herself involved and Philip III felt 
called upon to come to the help of his uncle, Charles of Anjou. 
The King of Aragon took a hand, and we thus have the first 
example of the future Italian wars with their Germanic and 
Spanish complications. In order to be at peace along the 
Pyrenees and to keep the Mediterranean open, France had 
overreached herself, and it was going to be necessary to with- 
draw. 

Philip the Bold died in 1285 on his return from a second 
expedition into Catalonia. His singularly precocious son, 
Philip the Fair, was only seventeen years old. He decided 
that the Sicilian affair would amount to nothing and sought to 
settle it with advantage and honor. He already began to apply 
his maxim: “We who always wish to be sensible.” It was un- 
reasonable to be chasing foreign will-of-the-wisps when France 
was not finished. Furthermore, the last crusades followed by 
these Italian and Spanish embroglios had been expensive. It 
was necessary to create taxes which aroused the discontent of 
the taxpayers, and it was necessary to exact money from every- 
body, even the clergy, which was the origin of the struggles 
between the new king and the Pope. For the first time France 
is confronted with a financial crisis. The monarchy, how- 
ever, had created a financial system and had organized the 
administration. The former expedients for raising funds by 
more or less voluntary gifts were now being regularized. The 
machinery of the state was beginning to function, but it was 
expensive. These difficulties, with which France is again con- 
fronted to-day, will last for centuries. 

In many ways there is a strange resemblance between the 
reign of Philip the Fair and that of Louis XIV. Both were 
in conflict with Rome. Philip IV destroyed the money powers 
in the state, especially those of the Templars, as Louis XIV 
was to rid himself of the financier Fouquet. Philip the Fair 
finally had been drawn into Flanders as Louis XIV will be, 
and this province, which it will be so difficult to acquire, will 
bring about serious complications. There seems to be a regu- 


56 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


lar rhythm in French history according to which the same situa- 
tions are reproduced at intervals of several centuries. 
However, the effect of the amicable arrangement concluded 
with England by Louis IX had worn off and the conflict was 
bound to be resumed. The English were still established in 
Guyenne and were masters of Bordeaux and this was a cause 
of continual friction. The question will soon be sharply de- 
fined and either there must be no English enclave in France 
or else the English must be masters of the country. There are 
those who feel that if England had been wise she would have 
evacuated territories which were clearly French, but England, 
an island and a sea power, has always needed possessions out- 
side. In this time when the world was much smaller, she 
regarded French provinces as colonies. It then seemed as 
natural to be at Bordeaux as it does to-day to be at Bombay. 
Both governments had for a long time temporized with this 
question, but the people had less patience than their kings. 
Edward I and Philip the Fair did not declare war; it broke 
out spontaneously between sailors from French Normandy and 
the English of Bordeaux. The governments became involved 
and Philip the Fair attempted to judge and condemn Edward 
as Philip Augustus had condemned John Lackland. However, 
this juridical method did not succeed. The conflict had be- 
come one between two nations, and the English king, naturally, 
was obstinate. Philip the Fair understood that a serious con- 
flict was impending, and he was the first to conceive the idea 
that in order to combat England she must be attacked on the 
seas. France was beginning to have a navy. The Crusades 
and the expeditions to Sicily and Spain had created a body of 
sailors. Philip the Fair sent the ships which had been in the 
Mediterranean into the Channel. The Genoese built an arsenal 
at Rouen, built a squadron and provided an admiral. Edward 
I, alarmed at this growing maritime force, raised a European 
coalition against France with much the same elements we have 
seen at Bouvines. Philip the Fair likewise sought for allies 
and replied by a continental blockade in which Sweden and 
Norway, the Hanseatic towns and the Iberian states, took part. 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS WAR 57 


The Flemish, who needed the English wool for their looms, 
refused to participate in this blockade, the purpose of which 
was to throttle England. Either this economic war would 
have to be given up or, as Philip saw it, Flanders would be 
forced to pursue the French policy. What was really at stake 
between the two belligerents was the control of the Flemish 
country, the future Belgium. It will readily be seen that this 
war upon which Philip the Fair was entering was essentially 
modern in its character and fraught with grave dangers. The 
German emperor, Adolph of Nassau, had entered the coalition 
and in an insolent manifesto claimed in the name of the em- 
pire rights and territories, especially that of Valenciennes. 
Philip replied to these demands with two words written on an 
enormous piece of parchment, “Too German.” These two 
words, which certainly the king’s councilors found rude and 
impolitic, had a magical effect. Adolph felt that France was 
ready to offer resistance and did not insist. Furthermore, 
Philip the Fair assured himself of German assistance and he 
also had the support of the papacy. In this conflict we already 
see all the elements of future European wars. 

When at the end of five years, in 1299, peace was signed 
with England, the object of the struggle, as often happens, 
had been lost sight of. With regard to Guyenne, an arrange- 
ment was made by which Edward I married Marguerite of 
France. Hereafter Philip the Fair directed his principal at- 
tention to Flanders. In his attempt to conquer this country, 
however, he was far from successful. This nation of weavers 
defeated French chivalry at Courtrai on the famous Day of 
the Spurs, 1302. It was necessary to organize a veritable 
expedition to end the revolt. It was evident that on this side 
France had reached the limit of her expansion. Whereas 
nearly everywhere else the new provinces had come into France 
willingly and sometimes enthusiastically, it was manifest that 
in Flanders there was a new nation which was one day te 
become Belgium. Philip, with customary good judgment, recog- 
nized this. He was content to reaffirm his suzerainty over 
Flanders and to keep as pledges the parts nearest to France, 


58 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Lille and Douai, which were more accessible to French influ- 
ence. No one was to be made French by force. 

These difficulties were one of the causes for the celebrated 
dispute which was to break out between the Pope and Philip 
the Fair. Pope Boniface VIIT had espoused the cause of the 
Count of Flanders and his daughter, whom the king had treated 
as rebels and whom he was keeping in captivity. The Pope, 
victorious in his long struggle with the Germanic emperors, 
was trying to lay a controlling hand upon governments. This 
Philip the Fair refused to accept. 

Boniface VIII had attempted to interfere in matters which 
were not his concern. He was entirely within his rights when 
he reproached Philip the Fair with having seized and withheld 
revenues of the Church; for while Philip was involved in the 
European difficulties, he was careful to see to it that no money 
was allowed to leave France. The Pope, however, criticized the 
government of Philip the Fair, accused him of oppression and 
tyranny, and intervened in financial matters. One of his griev- 
ances was the debasing of the currency which had likewise been 
one of the measures necessitated by the war, for in those days 
it was not easy to print banknotes and, instead, less precious 
metals and more alloy were used in the supposedly gold and 
silver coins. This was the former method of inflating the 
currency. 

Neither Philip the Fair nor France took kindly to these re- 
monstrances. Just as the press would do to-day to strike the 
popular imagination, the king published a résumé of the papal 
bull which exaggerated the Pope’s pretensions. He further- 
more sent broadcast in the facetious style of his “Too Ger- 
man,” an insolent reply in which Boniface was called “His 
Very Great Fatuity” and°in which Philip claimed that the 
Pope had little or no hope of salvation. To make it quite 
clear that France was behind him, the king called the States 
General. It has sometimes been held in our day that this was 
an innovation and that the States General of 1302 was the 
beginning of an institution and the origin of public liberty. 
As a matter of fact, there had always been assemblies. One 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS WAR 59 


of them, as we have seen, had elected Hugh Capet. The bour- 
geoisie of the towns and the guilds had been in the habit of 
deliberating on economic questions, especially that of the cur- 
rency. The convocation of 1302 did not surprise them, nor 
was it regarded as a great event, for the election of the repre- 
sentatives of the Third Estate started no tradition, and every- 
thing passed off naturally when in April the delegates, who 
had been summoned in March, met in Paris at the Church of 
Notre Dame. The nobles, the bourgeoisie, even the clergy, 
approved Philip’s resistance to the Pope. The King of France 
“recognized no superior upon earth.” <A tradition of monarchy 
and thee French state had been formed. 

Boniface VIII, who possessed great force of character, was 
not a man to give in. He maintained his pretension of con- 
voking a council at Rome in order to judge the Capetian and 
to consider the reform of the kingdom. Philip the Fair was 
threatened with excommunication if he refused to allow the 
French prelates to set out for Rome. He sought to negotiate. 
It was only when Philip saw that the Pope was resolved to 
excommunicate him and to use all the power of his spiritual 
office against him that he decided to forestall the attack and 
to strike a great blow. It was time, for the Pope’s action, if 
uncombated, might have brought about a division in France 
and the influence of the Pope was already beginning to make 
itself felt upon the clergy; and the religious orders, especially 
the Templars, were hesitating to follow the king. It was at 
this point that the chancellor, William of Nogaret, went to 
Rome, found Boniface VIII at Anagni, and made him prisoner. 
The Pope died in 1303, a few days after his release, it is said 
as the result of shock. 

This audacity and violence astonished Europe, which in an 
earlier age had seen a Germanic emperor humiliate himself 
at Canossa before Gregory VII. The King of France, how- 
ever, in spite of the age-long alliance between his kingdom and 
the papacy, had dared do violence to the Pope. The bulls of 
Boniface VIII were annulled and the King of France was the 
master in his own house. In order to save his authority and 


60 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the moral unity of his kingdom, he had decided to play for 
high stakes. That he had won was evident, when Clement V, 
the former Archbishop of Bordeaux, took up his residence at 
Avignon in 1308. For three quarters of a century the popes 
will remain there under the protection of the French monarchy. 

Philip the Fair had not worked for these results. They 
came about as the outcome of circumstances. To understand 
them we must remember Flanders and Courtrai. If the an- 
nexation of Flanders was superfluous, its submission was neces- 
sary to the nationalistic purposes of the king. It was indis- 
pensable that Flanders should submit if France was to be safe 
against England. The defeat of Courtrai had been a terrible 
blow. This defeat took place in 1302. The brutal action of 
Nogaret took place a year later. The King of France felt that 
he had to act in order to defend his European prestige. De- 
feated in Flanders, excommunicated at Rome, and possibly 
abandoned by a part of his subjects, he would have lost every- 
thing. The Flemish affair must therefore be regarded as the 
key to the policy of Philip the Fair. 

In order to raise money he had exacted it from those who 
had it and whom public opinion allowed him to strike. He 
had also imposed taxes which were as unpopular in his day as 
modern taxes on income and profits. He laid heavy charges 
upon foreign merchants and upon the Jews who were doing the 
banking of those days. As a result of his debasing the cur- 
rency, there were riots in Paris and the “counterfeiting King” 
was in real danger. Was it in order to procure funds that he 
destroyed the order of the Templars? Yes and no. The trial 
of the Templars is a part of the conflict with Boniface VIII. 
The order was not only rich, it was also powerful and was 
furthermore a state within the state. In addition, it was inter- 
national. In taking the part of Boniface VIII it had threat- 
ened the unity of the kingdom. The notorious trial of the 
Templars, which has caused so much discussion, was above 
all a political trial. Philip the Fair went to the length of 
burning numerous knights and their grand master, Jacques 
de Molay, as heretics only in order that he might cover this 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 61 


act of internal politics with the pretext of religion and morality. 
That private interests should have suffered need not surprise 
us. What have often been stigmatized as the crimes of Philip 
the Fair were committed in the name of public safety. It is 
perhaps not an accident that on the coins of this time we find 
the motto, Salus popult. It should not be forgotten that Philip 
the Fair, however, reunited with France Champagne, La 
Marche, Angouléme, Lyons and the surrounding country, that 
he married his second son, Philip the Tall, to the heiress of 
Burgundy, and that as a result of the long conflicts with 
Flanders, Lille, Douai and Orchies remained permanently 
French. 

We have already noticed that the men of this time were 
more difficult to govern than those of to-day. Uniformity of 
administration has rendered the task of government relatively. 
easy. In the Middle Ages, individuals were still able to defy 
the state, and conspiracies of malcontents to set its power at 
naught. Such conspiracies were formed at the end of the 
reign of Philip the Fair and included nobles and churchmen as 
well as the bourgeoisie. When at the early age of forty-six 
Philip the Fourth died in 1314, the kingdom was in turmoil 
and disorders were general. 

Louis X was surnamed Hutin, the Rioter, not, as has some- 
times been believed, because he was quarrelsome and combative, 
but because he came to the throne at a time of disorder and 
riotings. Historians are wrong to overlook his reign, for in 
it are to be found the keys to later events. The taxpayer is 
in a state of revolt and refuses to pay. It is necessary to cut 
down expenses, to save money on the navy which has always 
been costly and which had been fostered by Philip the Fair 
as a condition of French success. The young king is besieged 
by insolent requests, and the political and administrative 
achievements of the earlier reigns are endangered. In order 
to save them, Louis feels called upon to appease the malcontents 
and to take in sail before the storm. He even resorts to dema- 
gogism and sacrifices the man who represented the previous 
government, Le Portier, who is recognized as the strong right 


62 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


arm of Philip the Fair. He had become fiercely unpopular, 
for in this time of poverty he had become extremely rich. But 
by many of the bourgeoisie and barons and princes of the 
blood, the hanging of this minister who had sprung from the 
people was regarded as an act of personal vengeance. Le Por- 
tier, who is also to be known in history as Enguerrand de 
Marigny, will later be recognized as one of the great bene- 
factors of his country, for in this troubled time he provided 
royalty with some of its most powerful instruments and the 
people with institutions which, however unpopular at the time, 
were to make for order and peace. 

Poor Louis Hutin, condemned to ungrateful tasks, left little 
beyond his old name and a celebrated ordinance for the freeing 
of the serfs of his domain. The two years of his reign were 
however, not negligible, though the circumstances of his early 
death were to be more important than his life. For the first 
time in three hundred years a Capetian died leaving no son. 
There were no laws to govern the case. Having arisen in an 
earlier election from a sort of consulate for life which had 
become hereditary, the monarchy had no statute. Good sense 
supplied the deficiency. It would have been absurd that a 
woman should wear the crown of France and give it as a 
dowry to a stranger. It was already a rule, and an exception 
to feudal practice, that all appanages on the extinction of the 
male line should return to the crown. That is why instead of 
passing to Louis Hutin’s daughter, it went to his brother, 
Philip the Tall (1316-1322), the second son of Philip the 
Fair. The opposition of a few great feudal lords and princes 
of Valois was overcome by the assembly of notables held in 
Paris. It is a curious fact that, to legalize this succession in 
the male line, they had recourse to the same law of the Salic 
Franks, whence the odd name of Salic law. 

No one can tell what might have happened if the idea of 
heredity had not been so well established. The strange thing 
is that no one thought it worth while to mention the elective 
origin of royalty. The idea of the hereditary principle in the 
male line had taken deep root. Philip V reigned only a little 


CAPET TO HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 63 


longer than his older brother. Like him he wished to end the 
riotings. He seemed to distrust his hold upon his brother’s 
throne, though it had been uncontested. He wanted order 
everywhere; he broke up the leagues by relying upon his “good 
cities” and upon the University of Paris, and put down a new 
uprising of “Shepherds.” He also died young, in 1322, leaving 
no son. This time the crown passed without difficulty to his 
brother Charles, like his father, surnamed the Fair. As the 
first Capetian who was called Charles, he was careful to take 
the number IV in order to attach himself to Charlemagne’s 
line, just as the first Capetian Louis had taken the number 
VI. Charles the Fair, like his brother, was occupied in policing 
the kingdom and did so with a heavy hand. He hanged several 
financiers. The people after every reign call for holocausts. 
Some feudal brigands were also condemned to death. While 
these things were taking place, England and Germany were 
in revolution. Regicide is nothing new in England. Edward 
IT, the deposed king, was killed in prison. Charles profited by 
this disorder to sequestrate Guyenne. 

In Germany, the emperor, a Bavarian, had been excom- 
municated, and his right to the throne contested. His adver- 
saries sought the aid of the King of France and offered him 
the imperial crown. These divisions were necessary for 
France’s security but, unfortunately for her, were not to last. 

Charles the Fair in his turn died in 1328, after a short 
reign. Like his brothers, he left only a daughter though the 
queen was expecting a second child. Charles designated his 
cousin, Philip of Valois, as regent, but the queen gave birth to 
another daughter. By that fact the regent became king. The 
Salic law was applied of itself. 

An assembly like that which had elected Hugh Capet ap- 
proved the concurring opinion of the jurists. The accession of 
the younger branch had, therefore, occurred without much con- 
fusion. ‘There was, to be sure, some discussion at this time, 
in which the French were not too strongly given to respecting 
authority. There was also the claim of Edward ITI, grandson 
of Philip the Fair, brought forward by his mother, Isabel. 


64 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


The claim was disregarded for many reasons, the most im- 
portant of which was “that in France they did not wish to be 
subjects of the King of England.” The claims of Edward were 
soon to serve as a pretext for English expansion. In this con- 
flict, France will be nearly extinguished and the enemy will not 
fail to attack the titles of Philip VI whom the Flemish will 
call “the raked-up king,” and the English, “the usurper.” 
Something of all this will remain, a certain discredit, which 
will show itself in the so-called revolution of Etienne Marcel. 
Charles the Bad could not have been a possible pretender in 
the preceding century. In these unfortunate circumstances in 
which, for the first time, fortune abandons the Capetians are 
to be sought the germs of the approaching calamities. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR AND 
THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 


Ar this point in French history, let us pause to cast a glance 
backward. After three centuries and a half, the Capetians, 
whose beginnings had been insignificant, had attained results 
worthy of consideration. The France which they had formed 
had already become a power to be reckoned with, and their task 
had not been an easy one. Regard for the general good was 
no more widespread than in our own day and special interests 
did not sacrifice themselves more willingly then, than now. 

A combination of circumstances fortunate for France had 
dispelled the danger threatening from Germany and England. 
These countries had suffered division, and been rendered harm- 
less by internal conflicts beside which those of France were as 
nothing. For a long time, there would be no question of Ger- 
man interference. It was not to be the same, however, with 
England. The mad folly of the Plantagenets, the agitation of 
the barons to obtain the Magna Charta, and the discontent 
against Edward II which ended so tragically—all these cir- 
cumstances had weakened the power of the English king. In 
the southwest of France, they had also enabled the Capetians 
to push back the English-Norman state, which had fallen from 
its former glory. But the English monarchy rose stronger 
than ever from this last crisis. One would have said that she 
had tempered herself again in regicide. England under Ed- 
ward III had a strong government. Moreover, she had become 
a country of industry and commerce which needed both mar- 
kets and colonies. France was close at hand and France was 
rich, An irresistible instinct goaded on to conquest an Eng- 
land, once freed from her dissensions. 

France was prosperous; the booty of Edward’s army was to 

65 


66 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


bear witness to that fact. Long years of organization and peace 
had permitted the French to accumulate riches. Michelet says: 
“The flourishing condition in which the English found this 
country ought to make us discount much of all that the his- 
torians have said concerning the royal administration in the 
fourteenth century.” Industrious and economical, the peas- 
antry and bourgeoisie of France were what they have always 
been. They did not suspect that their land was envied; that 
their riches would not take care of themselves or that their 
gold would invite conquest. They did not understand that 
certain sacrifices are necessary and that it is not wise to be 
niggardly in paying premiums to secure national safety. In 
this rich country there was nevertheless great unwillingness to 
pay taxes. There was almost a revolution at the end of the 
reign of Philip the Fair, and his sons were forced to yield on 
the question of money. For all that, Philip of Valois found 
himself in a most fortunate situation: he had allies on the 
continent; cousins who reigned in Naples and in Hungary; 
and three kings at his own court, among whom was the King 
of Bohemia. Indeed, it seemed that France had nothing to 
fear. When Edward again took up the old English policy and 
tried to league the princes of Germany and the Low Countries 
against France, Philip VI dispersed this coalition with a 
gesture. He had them all so well in hand that he even found a 
means of acquiring Montpellier and Dauphiné, from the latter 
of which the eldest sons of the kings of France were after- 
wards to take the title of Dauphins. For once the Count of 
Flanders was a good Frenchman, and his rebellious Flemings 
were beaten at Cassel in 1328. England had no allies. If the 
English woolen merchants wished to enter France, they would 
have to buckle on their armor and fight their way in. They 
could not enter by Flanders. 

It is easy to understand the course of events after Philip 
the Fair. The great conflict centered always around Flanders. 
Through this country the English sought to attack France and 
France to attack England. It does not help to explain the 
causes of the disaster which was soon to come upon the French, 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 67 


to accuse Philip of Valois of having been a feudalist and a 
reactionary carried away by chivalry. Edward III also fol- 
lowed the symbols and customs of chivalry; he was “presented 
with the heron” before his departure for France and we know 
his remark at Crécy about the spurs * of the little Black Prince. 
He, too, was following the feudal fashion. 

If Philip VI had but a feudal force to oppose to the Eng- 
lish army, it was only because he had been unable to provide 
himself with any other. In this matter of military organiza- 
tion, France was considerably behind England. Edward IIT 
had succeeded in raising a virtually modern army, provided 
with artillery and all the latest war material. He had an army 
of yeomen who owed obligatory service and who wore a uniform. 
In France the case stood far otherwise. The people rebelled 
against taxation. Philip VI was attempting to raise money 
through the Pope and the promise of a crusade, methods of 
doubtful efficacy. The crews of his ships were untrained and 
the ships themselves were in poor condition. As for military 
service, the communes bought themselves off and the nobility 
who owed service demanded indemnities. 

Several years passed before any decisive engagement. The 
adversaries were feeling each other out. Edward III was 
meddling in French affairs, seeking to control the succession in 
Artois and in Brittany, and the French were lending aid against 
him to the Scotch king. Finally Flanders, after hesitating a 
long time, took sides with the English. Edward here found a 
man made to his hand, the famous brewer of Ghent, Jacques 
Arteveld, who became the veritable master of Flanders. Hos- 
tilities opened upon the sea, and the French fleet paid for its 
years of neglect. It was destroyed in 1340 at the fatal battle 
of Sluys: the Hundred Years’ War began with this disaster, 
the equivalent of Trafalgar. From that time on England was 
mistress of the sea. She was to invade France where and 
when she wished. 


1 When the Black Prince was hard. pressed in the battle, his father was 
urged to send troops to his aid. He replied that the boy should be left 
to win his spurs. 


68 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


However, this Flemish campaign took a sudden turn. Ed- 
ward III feared to become too deeply involved in France and 
Philip VI wisely refused to give battle. A popular uprising in 
which Jacques Arteveld perished, made Flemish loyalty to 
England less sure. The English then tried a diversion by way 
of Brittany where John of Montfort was struggling to maintain 
his right to the duchy against Charles of Blois who was sup- 
ported by France. This had all the marks of a dynastic war 
in which the Breton particularism was to show itself. The 
King of England took the side of Montfort but his intervention 
led to nothing. The attacks against France, both through 
Flanders and Brittany, had failed. Edward IIT had finished 
his preparation, reaccoutered his army and with no danger 
threatening him from the sea, landed in the Cotentin. 

It was the invasion of a defenseless country. At one stroke 
the English army overran Normandy, pillaging the open 
towns. It proceeded up the Seine and threatened Paris. 
Philip VI, during this time, was harassing the enemy in 
Guyenne. He hastened up from the south with his army and 
his approach decided Edward, who felt uncertain of himself 
when threatened by an attack, to hurry away as fast as possible 
to the north. Several times his retreat was almost cut off, but 
finally, thinking that everything was lost, he determined to 
give battle. As a matter of fact, he was afraid of the French 
army and had little confidence in his own superiority. He 
had, however, the advantage in tactics and in war material. 
His foresight and organization won over rashness and reck- 
less bravery on the fatal day at Crécy. The principal military 
force of France was there destroyed in 1346 and Edward III 
was free to besiege and take Calais. For two centuries England 
was to hold this “bridge-head.” 

Edward IIT did not follow up his advantage. War was ex- 
pensive and armies not numerous. A truce, several times re- 
newed, was signed with France. It lasted until the death of 
Philip VI in 1350. The defeat at Crécy, the first great defeat 
of French royalty, had a disastrous effect. It came at an un- 
fortunate moment. One historian had said that at the acces- 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 69 


sion of John the Good, “treason was everywhere,” and Sheds 
ence was nowhere. The Count d’Harcourt, a traitor, had 
already called Edward III to the Cotentin; and there were 
understandings with England elsewhere than in Brittany. 
King John was sure of no one, least of all of his feudal nobles. 
He tried to attach them to him by the sentiment of honor and 
took advantage of the fashion to create an order of chivalry; 
thus what was taken for medieval fantasy had a political object. 
This John, who is represented as a madman, a restless and 
vainglorious romanticist, knew what he was doing. His au- 
thority was compromised. He did not hesitate to have a con- 
stable, the Count d’Eu who had sold the stronghold of Guines 
to the English, beheaded without trial. But he was to find 
a traitor in his own family. Charles the Bad, King of Na- 
varre, grandson of Louis Hutin, thought himself unjustly 
deprived of the throne of France. He and his followers were 
arousing the country by their intrigues and their quarrels. 
John tried in vain to win them over by generosity. But Charles 
was powerful; he had fiefs, domains and followers almost every- 
where in France. The party of Navarre did not fear to take 
vengeance by assassinating the new constable appointed by 
John. It was the beginning of political crimes and civil war. 
John resolved to go further and sequestrated the domains of 
the King of Navarre, who then allied himself openly with Eng- 
land. This was the signal for the renewal of hostilities with 
the English (1355). 

The struggle began badly for France. The king had to 
reckon with Charles the Bad who, for a long time, eluded 
him; and when finally by a bold stroke he did succeed in 
capturing him, it was only to see one part of the realm rise 
up in Charles’ favor. John proceeded to summary execution, 
and subdued the rebels, but he did not wish to shed the blood 
of his family and contented himself by imprisoning the King 
of Navarre who begged for pardon on his knees. The latter 
was soon to reappear, the worse for his humbled pride. In 
the meantime, the English troops had set forth. They invaded 
and ravaged France, this time in the south, and advanced 


70 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


through the southwest. A new encounter, inevitable since 
Crécy, was at hand. Edward III was again prepared for it. 
He was short of money but industrial and commercial England 
borrowed from the Florentine bankers on the basis of their 
woolen interests. For France, which was above all an agri- 
cultural country, this resource was lacking. Taxes alone could 
refill her treasury but less than ever were the French in a 
humor to pay; while at the same time they complained of the 
financial expedients to which the crown had been reduced, 
John had to turn to the provincial assemblies to obtain his 
subsidies, and in 1355 he convoked the States General. There, 
Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris, came upon 
the scene. Warned by the chancellor of the dangers to which 
France was exposed, the assembly voted the taxes but on condi- 
tion that they should be collected by their agents and dispensed 
under their own control. They rebuked the government severely 
for its administration of the public finances. It was a good 
principle that taxes should be voted and collected by the repre- 
sentatives of those who paid them. The king accepted it. He 
was having trouble enough to collect money and was glad to 
leave the task to others. But the States had no success. They 
were no more fortunate than the king. One part of France was 
in rebellion. Normandy, Artois, and Picardy had not wished 
to send deputies to the States General and refused to pay the 
taxes. The Assembly of 1355 had outlined a representative 
government: it was no better obeyed than the other and anarchy 
was all the worse. The States, in the face of the refusal of 
the taxpayers, replaced the duty on salt and on sales by a kind 
of income tax, which was received with the same protests. In 
the meantime, the enemy was ravaging France. “Resistance to 
the taxes voted by the States,” says Michelet, “delivered the 
kingdom to the English.” 

John the Good had to meet the invader with troops no better 
armed and no better disciplined than those of Crécy. These 
ten years had been lost in discontent and dissensions. France 
had made no military progress. Her only army, the feudal 
army of knights, fought according to tactics which were worth- 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 71 


less, and repeated the faults of Crécy. This time her disaster 
was complete. At Poitiers, King John who had fought in per- 
son, battle-ax in hand, was taken prisoner and carried to Lon- 
don by the English (1356). 

The true color of these events has been falsified by an ex- 
quisite but stupid story-teller. Froissart is interested only in 
the knightly strokes and the fine points of chivalry, with which 
he “illuminates” his tale. The reality was not so romantic. In 
a country where disorder had been increasing for fifty years, 
the disappearance of the king created a revolutionary situation. 
The dauphin, Charles, named lieutenant of the realm, remained 
alone at Paris. He was later to become an able king but he 
was then a very young man, cold, timid, weakly in appearance, 
and precociously prudent. He had no authority in Paris, al- 
ready a big, tumultuous town where all the phenomena of the 
debacle were seen. At the news of the catastrophe of Poitiers, 
a search was begun for those responsible for it. The nobles, 
that is the army, were accused. The cry of treason was raised. 
The dauphin having convoked the States General, the assembly 
began, as all such assemblies do in similar circumstances, by 
naming a committee of investigation which demanded a coun- 
cil to keep watch of the dauphin and the public officials, as 
well as a committee from the army to make the necessary 
dispositions in matters of war. It was an attempt at parlia- 
mentary government, and politics immediately appeared. 
There was a Navarre party in the States. One of the requests 
presented by the commission was directed towards securing the 
liberty of the King of Navarre, illegally imprisoned. 

Things, having taken this turn, became rapidly worse. To 
the requests of the States the dauphin replied in a dilatory 
fashion, and asked to refer them to his father. In the mean- 
time, the confusion throughout the country was increasing. 
The English and the party of Navarre were devastating the 
countryside. Armed bands in great companies gave them- 
selves over to brigandage. Paris, which had been hastily sur- 
rounded by walls, was filled with refugees who spread alarm 
and disease. Several riots warned the dauphin that he would 


72 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


have to yield to the wishes of the States General. As he said 
later, “To dissimulate in the presence of the fury of perverse 
people, when it is necessary, is common sense.” He had just 
given an order which satisfied the deputies on several points 
when King John sent word from London that, a truce having 
been signed with England, there was no further need of voting 
the taxes proposed by the States, nor consequently, of holding 
the Easter session. The agitation at Paris only increased and 
from that time on, Etienne Marcel acted like a veritable revo- 
lutionary. He needed to have the support of a party and a 
name. À bold stroke liberated Charles the Bad who through 
the complicity of the provost of the merchants, came to Paris 
and harangued the people. In the meantime, Etienne Marcel 
made his followers take the red and blue cockade. His plan 
was to humiliate the dauphin, to destroy his prestige and what 
remained of his authority. He went to the Louvre one day, 
with armed troops, followed by a great crowd, and in a speech 
he severely rebuked the dauphin. Then, upon a sign from the 
provost, the two marshals, councilors of the young prince, who 
were standing near him, were assassinated before his eyes. 
Upon the dauphin himself, covered with their blood, Etienne 
Marcel set the red and blue cap, as at a later date another mob 
was to set the red bonnet on the head of Louis XVI. 

These revolutionary scenes, which were so strikingly re- 
peated four hundred years later, scarcely accord with the pic- 
ture we ordinarily imagine of the man of the Middle Ages, 
piously submissive to his kings. We do not know how the 
dauphin, prisoner of Etienne Marcel after the bloody day of 
the Louvre, succeeded in escaping from Paris. Having reached 
the age of eighteen, he assumed the title of regent, and took 
refuge in the Champagne country, receiving the support of 
the States of that province. This was the beginning of the 
counter resistance. Many of the deputies of the States Gen- 
eral, thoroughly frightened, had fled from Paris. They held 
an assembly at Compiégne which pronounced itself for the 
regent and, under his promise of certain reforms, accorded him 
the resources necessary for the raising of troops. The dauphin 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 73 


immediately began the siege of Paris, Etienne Marcel having 
refused to submit. 

It was civil war, a contest for power. It awakened the dor- 
mant evil instincts, and “spontaneous anarchy” broke out. In 
all the region that surrounded the capital in Laon, Amiens, 
Beauvais and Soissons, where the communal movement had 
formerly taken the most violent forms, there was a terrible 
Jacquerie.” Etienne Marcel welcomed with joy, if he did not 
indeed provoke it, this revolt of the peasants and allied him- 
self with its chiefs. But the rebellious peasants to whom he 
had lent his hand were beaten almost by chance at Meaux. 
Charles the Bad himself, in order not to alienate the nobles 
of his party, aided in suppressing the revolt and there was a 
great massacre of the rebels. With the Jacquerie, Etienne 
Marcel lost his chief hope. He counted now only upon Charles 
the Bad to whom he gave the title of Captain General of Paris, 
but who having become prudent, was already negotiating with 
the dauphin. In fact, the terror which the Jacquerie had 
spread was reéstablishing the prestige of the royalists. Paris, 
hard pressed, was short of provisions, and began to murmur. 
The people complained even more bitterly when the provost 
of the merchants invited the English into the town. The roy- 
alist party, terrorized by the massacre after the flight of the 
regent, took courage again. Etienne Marcel was killed at the 
very moment when, according to the story, he himself was 
stationing the guards who were to open the gates of the city 
to the King of Navarre: the last resource of the revolutionary 
chief seems in any case to have been to offer the crown to 
Charles the Bad. Etienne Marcel died a traitor. 

Jean Maillart and the Parisian bourgeoisie who had led this 
counter-revolution arrested the friends of the provost, and sent 
some deputies to the regent who again took possession of the 
city. This was in July 1358 The disorders had lasted for 
two years. Their marks were to remain long in the minds of 
the people. When the dauphin entered Paris, a bourgeois, 


2 A rising of the French peasants. The name originated from the fact 
that the peasants as ai class were called Jacques or Jacques bonhomme. 


74 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


according to the tale of Christine de Pisan, approached and 
addressed him in a threatening speech. The young prince 
prevented any one from hurting the man, and contented him- 
self by answering him in a phrase worthy of Henry IV: “No 
one will believe you, my fine fellow.” The future king, 
Charles, who was to become Charles the Wise, was to retain 
the impression of these revolutionary events. 

Royalty was reéstablished in the capital, but the civil war 
had not yet settled the affairs of France. The ravaged country 
districts, left to the mercy- of the English, defended themselves 
as best they could. The “companies,” the brigands, the hordes 
from Navarre added to all these calamities. Peace was the 
first necessity of the realm. But the one offered by Edward III 
was such that the States General authorized the regent to 
reject it. Its acceptance would have meant that the old Anglo- 
Norman state would have been revived. Edward III then pre. 
pared anew to invade France and this menace had a salutary 
effect; even Charles the Bad himself was ashamed to appear 
disloyal and concluded a provisional agreement with the regent, 
while the military pursued the large companies of marauders. 
Edward III having landed at Calais with a powerful army, 
was confronted everywhere by hostile populations and by towns 
which refused to open their doors to him. He appeared before 
Paris, but the French would not give battle. Weary of combat- 
ing a desert country, Edward III, fearing a defeat, modified 
his demands. The treaty of Brétigny, which left the French 
Normandy but took away all the southwest up to the Loire, 
was signed in 1360. The tribute of war, called the ransom 
of King John, was fixed at three million gold crowns payable in 
six annual payments. Invasion, dismemberment and a crushing 
indemnity; such was the price of the disorders which had com- 
menced in the last years of Philip the Fair, and bore fruit in 
the Revolution of Paris. 

The French nation had paid dearly for fifty years of insub- 
ordination and disorder. She was to recover her loss by pur- 
suing the opposite policy. John, released, was to live four 
years more, which he spent in ridding the country of the brig- 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 75 


ands who infested it. When his son, Charles, succeeded him 
in 1364 the work was still far from complete. A great reign 
of reparation and restoration began. Charles V, surnamed the 
Wise, was not one of Froissart’s knights. There was about him 
no display. He lived, as Louis XI later, in seclusion. He 
thought, meditated, laid up funds, and planned. He was a 
reconstructor, the man whom France needed. He bound up 
her wounds and in less than twenty years, restored her to her 
proper rank. 

His idea is not difficult to understand. If France resigned 
herself to the treaty of Brétigny, she could no longer exist. 
The English king must be driven out or he would end by be- 
coming master. To do this, two things were needed; first an 
army, and next a fleet. Charles V had no army; indeed, he 
was so far from having one that his famous and faithful con- 
stable, Duguesclin, was at first only the captain of one of 
those bands that were carrying on guerilla warfare all over 
France. The king attached Duguesclin to himself; through 
him he rallied to his cause some of the large companies, and 
little by little formed them into regular troops. The party 
of Navarre, ever goaded on by England, was defeated at 
Cocherel; a small victory which had momentous results. The 
King of Navarre perceived that he had nothing more to hope 
for, that order was to be restored, and that the troubled times 
were over. Charles the Wise compromised with Charles the 
Bad while waiting for something more satisfactory. He com- 
promised everywhere, according to his maxim that it was the 
part of wisdom to give in temporarily to perverse people. He 
compromised even with the obstinate leaders of the large com- 
panies. Duguesclin, by a stroke of genius, led these malcon- 
tents into Spain, in the pay of Henry of Transtamare, to fight 
Peter the Cruel who was backed by the English. After various 
vicissitudes Henry was successful, and became a very useful 
ally of the French. 

There was but one way to liberate France and Charles V, 
wise, intelligent, a man of books and reflection, understood it. 
The English must no longer be masters of the sea. As soon 


76 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


as communication between the island and the continent ceased 
to be safe, the English armies, in a country that was hostile 
and which did not submit easily to their domination, would be 
lost. The creation of a navy was a work demanding a long 
period of time, persistence and money; and it has always been 
difficult to interest the French landsman in the things of the 
sea. Charles V began at the beginning in his preparation for 
the revival of the French maritime power, and depended in 
the meantime upon the fleet of his Spanish allies. He was 
aided by England’s neglect, of her own navy. Indeed it would 
be difficult to explain the reversals which were soon to over- 
take England, were it not for the fact that she herself in turn 
had weakened. At the end of Edward III’s reign she was worn 
out by her earlier efforts. Her parliamentary government 
which had begun with the Charter of the Barons, had de- 
veloped. The House of Commons had been separated from the 
House of Lords and held regular sessions as the States General 
‘ had wished to do; and the Commons, less and less willingly 
voted taxes for war. To the chancellor, who asxed them if 
they wished perpetual peace, they replied, “Yes, certainly.” 
England was relaxing her former hold. 

Finally, having made alliances by sea and land, Charles 
listened to the appeal of the ceded populations and renounced 
the treaty of Brétigny. The campaign, led by Duguesclin, 
consisted in wearing down the enemy, a process which became 
more rapid after the English fleet had been destroyed by the 
Spaniards before La Rochelle. The conditions of the contest 
were changing. French corsairs, or those in the pay of France, 
were harassing the convoys and sometimes the ports of the 
enemy. Edward III, alarmed, wished to strike a blow, but 
he needed a year to prepare a new army to send into France. 
The order was given everywhere, to refuse him battle and not 
to repeat the errors of Crécy and Poitiers. This English 
army wandered about seeking an adversary which ever eluded 
it and was finally to return to Bordeaux worn out and almost 
ridiculous, while chateau by chateau and town by town, the 
southwest provinces were being liberated. Charles V took 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 77 


good care to encourage the patriotism of the latter by the crea- 
tion of several privileges. He used particularly the grant of 
nobility, extending it to the ranks and making it easier of 
attainment. 

Edward ITI, finally discouraged, accepted the overtures of 
peace. Charles V demanded evacuation of the entire country, 
including Calais. England refused, and hostilities began 
again. The King of France had profited by this truce to 
realize his great project, the creation of a navy. This part 
of his work has been much neglected by historians. M. Tra- 
mond says: “He employed every means to secure money; he 
threatened; he flattered the States General; in person he took 
the deputies to visit the ships and dockyards in order to in- 
terest them in the development of the navy; he secured the 
funds he needed and used them with a strict economy and a 
keen sense of the object to be obtained.” To inspire in the 
French an interest in the sea, Charles V proceeded exactly 
according to the methods of to-day. 

If Charles V had lived ten years longer, it is probable that 
France would never have needed a Joan of Arc; there would 
have been no more English in France. At the end of his 
reign, the rôles were reversed. The French squadrons, com- 
manded by Admiral Jean de Vienne, the counterpart of 
Duguesclin on the sea, were freely ravaging the English coast 
and the Spanish allies even entered the Thames. In France, the 
English possessed only Bayonne, Bordeaux and Calais. Their 
complete expulsion was only a matter of time, because their 
internal affairs were going badly. Edward III and the Black 
Prince were dead. Richard II was only thirteen and his 
minority was to be stormy. Wyclif had announced his Re- 
form, commerce was suffering and a Jacquerie more terrible 
than that in France was to come. Nevertheless, fortune was 
turning. Through the death of Charles V, France fell back 
into the weaknesses of a minority. This was followed by a 
catastrophe from which, up to that time, the Capetian monarchy 
had been delivered; hardly had the king attained his majority 
before he became insane. 


78 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


To understand these events, it is necessary to bear clearly in 
mind some points in the policy of Charles V. When he took 
over the kingdom, it was in a state of revolution; by sheer 
force of skill he reéstablished the royal authority. or several 
years the States General had virtually been the masters. 
Charles gently edged them aside, although he retained the 
financial organization which they had set up. The States 
General had wished to give a character of regularity to the taxes 
voted by them. The aides thus were no longer a feudal right 
claimed by the king as lord of his domain and as suzerain 
in the rest of the realm. These aides, thanks to the reforms 
demanded by the assemblies, tended to become state taxes. 
Charles V adopted these reforms and made them permanent; 
and lest the States General should undo their good work, he 
gradually lengthened the intervals between their sessions and 
then set them aside entirely. His patience, his quick mind, 
and the prestige of an economical administration were all 
needed for the success of such an astute move. The millions 
which he left in the treasury at his death were worth more in 
the eyes of the French bourgeoisie than all their arrangements 
for the supervision of taxes. This progress in administration 
was the foundation for the defeat of the English. But the 
government was still not stabilized, and a bad policy would 
soon have compromised it. Indeed circumstances were already 
conspiring to throw France again into disorder. The well- 
known saying: 


“The best laid schemes 0’ mice an’ men 
Gang aft a-gley,” 


was to apply in this case. 

The monarchy remained faithful to the custom of appanages 
by which a French province was turned over to one of the 
princes. Indeed this custom seemed to offer more advantages 
than disadvantages. It insured peace and harmony among the 
sons of France. These domains momentarily detached from 
the crown, regularly returned to it. John the Good, having 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 19 


acquired Burgundy by inheritance, had given it as appanage 
to his son Philip. Charles, absorbed in his great plans against 
England, imagined that he could make his brother, the Duke 
of Burgundy, serve his purpose to free Flanders from English 
influence by attaching it to France through a Burgundian alli- 
ance. With this idea, Duke Philip of Burgundy had married 
the heiress of the Count of Flanders, and to facilitate this 
marriage, Charles V had consented to restore to the Flemings 
the conquests of Philip the Fair: Lille, Douai, and Orchies. 
He fully expected that this French Flanders, followed by the 
rest of the province, would some day return to France, and 
in the meantime, the duchy of Flanders-Burgundy would en- 
circle Calais, and would extend the French realm of influence 
towards Germany and the Low Countries. This plan seemed 
flawless. However, the result was quite contrary to Charles’ 
hopes. Far from assimilating Flanders, Burgundy was ab- 
sorbed by her. And this Flanders was more than refractory; 
she set out to conquer those who thought they had vanquished 
her. Thus the house of Burgundy, through the Flemish pos- 
sessions, was more and more separated from France, and was 
to become one of her worst enemies under Jean sans Peur and 
Charles the Bold. 

In this tragic fourteenth century, full of insanity and fury, 
the reign of Charles V was an oasis of reason for France. 
Everywhere else there was madness and revolt. Charles VI, 
Richard IT and their uncles bear the stamp of the times as do 
Arteveld, Etienne Marcel and Rienzi. Respect for authority 
had everywhere disappeared. English kings were dethroned 
and murdered in a way to provide fit subjects for the tragedies 
of Shakespeare. The highest of all powers, the spiritual, that 
of the papacy, had vanished, as it were. There was a schism in 
the Church, two popes were at war, one in Rome, the other 
in Avignon. In the general dispute, neither one nor the other 
was venerated. 

At the death of Charles V, France was very near to falling 
back into her old unrest. There were distressing symptoms in 
Brittany and in Flanders, and it was under conditions such as 


80 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


these that she was again forced to undergo the perils of a 
minority. 

Hardly had the wise king died than the uncles of Charles 
VI began quarreling for the regency. It was a bad beginning. 
An assembly of dignitaries and members of parliament had to 
be called in to arbitrate, and they created a council of the 
four dukes, those of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy and Bourbon, 
as regents. It was a poor combination: in this republic of 
princes, the Duke of Anjou thought only of his inheritance, 
Naples; the Duke of Burgundy, only of Flanders. The power 
was weak and what was worse, it was divided. The illustrious 
collaborators, the good councilors of Charles V, like Duguesclin, 
were dead, or out of favor with the dukes. Nothing more was 
needed to reawaken the spirit of revolution. 

As soon as the regents wished to levy taxes, riots broke out 
in Paris. Bidding for popularity, the council of the regency 
immediately yielded. Whereupon the towns of the provinces, 
encouraged by this example, offered the same resistance. The 
council then turned to the States General, to vote the aides. 
The whole system of Charles V was destroyed, and the appeal 
to the States was as ineffectual as during the captivity of John 
the Good. It was evident that the government was powerless, 
and it was nearly everywhere defied. In Rouen, Amiens, and 
Languedoc there were uprisings. While the Duke of Anjou 
was chastising Rouen, Paris revolted again and more violently. 
The people pillaged the arsenal, armed themselves, and carried 
off 20,000 iron mallets. This was known as the Sedition of 
the Maillotins. The duke had to return to Paris, where the 
bourgeoisie, terrified by the excesses of the mutineers, came to 
terms with the regents. Right or wrong, the Duke of Bur- 
gundy insisted that the heart of the revolution was in Ghent 
where the inhabitants had revolted against their count, his 
father-in-law. An expedition was led into Flanders and the 
‘young king took part. Charles V had left a well-organized 
army: it was set to work in the interest of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy. The Flemings were crushed at Rosebeke. It was then 
necessary for the army to return to Paris as quickly as possible 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 81 


to repress a new revolt of the Maillotins. This time the royal 
army entered, sword in hand. The repression was drastic and 
for three weeks the courts-martial pronounced executions 
(1382). 

The work of Charles V was being undone by these disorders. 
Fortunately England at this moment, also under too young a 
king, the mad Richard II, was not less upset. The Duke of 
Burgundy, who had a gift for politics, although he applied it 
more particularly to benefit his own affairs, was perhaps not 
wrong when he said that revolutions were supported and spread 
from one country to another. In the midst of these disquieting 
symptoms, Charles VI became of age. His intentions were 
good and he recalled his father’s councilors, whom the people 
derisively called the “marmousets,” “the little men.” John of 
Vienne and Clisson were still living and with them he under- 
took to liberate the country. But the young king did not have 
his father’s prudence; he wished to settle the question of Eng- 
land at one blow—invade her and become another William the 
Conqueror. For seven years, the fleet, for want of care and 
money, had been neglected. Through the ill will of the dukes, 
the expedition was not ready on time and it never set out. 
Put on their guard, the English, for whom nothing could have 
been better than this attempted invasion, incited Brittany to 
revolt. It was on the way to chastise the English party at 
Montfort that Charles VI became insane in the forest of Le 
Mans (1392). 

Anywhere else this unhappy mad king would have been de- 
throned. France kept him with a curious sort of tenderness, 
through respect for legality and legitimacy; and in certain 
quarters there was also undoubtedly a belief that this shadow 
of a king would be convenient and would allow license free 
play. His uncles hastened to return. There was to be license 
indeed and France was soon to be rent asunder by civil wars. 

We have already seen that there was schism in the Church 
with one Pope at Rome and another at Avignon. The Uni- 
versity of Paris took the rôle of arbitrator of the conflict and 
in order to force the rival popes to yield, took it upon herself 


82 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


to say that it was no longer necessary to obey either one or 
the other. In the meantime, the French monarchy continued 
to sustain the cause of the Pope at Avignon. This policy was 
that of the Duke of Orléans, brother of the insane king, and a 
newcomer in the council of the regency, where the other dukes 
had to receive him against their will. There is no doubt that 
Louis of Orléans in this council of princes represented the 
interest of France and the national tradition. Louis had the 
University against him because of the affair of the popes; the 
taxpayers, because, in order to continue the work of Charles 
the Wise, it was necessary to levy taxes; and finally the Duke 
of Burgundy, because the latter, by his possessions in Flanders 
and the Low Countries, found himself involved in a system 
which was not French. This new duke, Jean sans Peur, cousin 
germane of the king, and of the Duke of Orléans, was no longer 
French; he was a nationalized Fleming. In reality, he was a 
foreigner in the French council of the regency. It was natural 
that the maicontents should have rallied about him. 

It was evident that Louis and Jean sans Peur were at log- 
gerheads. The Burgundian undid whatever Louis attempted to 
do. The taxes which the latter established were suppressed 
by Jean sans Peur, which was an easy way of courting popular : 
favor. It also increased his popularity with the English, and 
to conciliate England was a settled policy of the Flemish. By 
his marriage with the daughter of Charles VI, Richard IT 
had become friendly to France, and furthermore he was too 
busy with seditions at home to think of undertaking any cam- 
paign across the Channel. These seditions were only in part 
the cause of his fall, for he had been imprudent and extravagant 
in his dealings with his difficult English subjects and their 
parliament. The fate of Richard II was like that of Edward 
IT; both of them were reproached by their subjects for having 
taken French queens. Richard was dethroned by his cousin 
Henry of Lancaster and then assassinated. France was not to 
profit by his death, for instead of a harmless blunderer, Eng- 
land was now to have a king who was not only the enemy of 
France but also the father of Henry V, the man of Agincourt, 





WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 83 


an enemy more dangerous than even Edward III had been. 
The cautious attitude of Jean sans Peur favored Lancaster 
against the interests of France. 

In the government of the dukes, then, it was the Burgundian 
influence which prevailed and directed the policy of the French 
state. In order that Louis of Orléans should be as powerful 
as his cousin, it was necessary that, like him, he should have 
possessions outside of France. He acquired Luxemburg, from 
which he could observe events in the Low Countries. The 
Duke of Burgundy felt himself threatened and directed all of 
his attention to suppressing his rival. In 1407 he had his 
cousin killed one evening in the streets of Paris. 

The assassination of the Duke of Orléans cut France in two. 
It crystallized the parties, and was the signal for civil war. 
Both sides sought allies wherever they were to be found, even 
in England. The Orléans party brought in the terrible Gascons 
of the Count of Armagnac, and it was by this name of Armagnac 
that the party of Orléans was frequently to be designated as 
opposed to that of Burgundy. The latter had always sought the 
favor of Paris and that city espoused their cause. We have 
seen that the University had taken sides in the matter of the 


popes. It now opposed the Pope of Avignon who was favored 





by the Duke of Orléans. The University thus took sides with 
Burgundy and justified the crime of Jean sans Peur, and 
wished to legislate for France. Just as Etienne Marcel had 
offered the crown to Charles of Navarre, the University of- 
fered it to the Duke of Burgundy. Ke replied that he was not 
capable of governing so large a realm as that of France. It 
may be that he preferred to foment disorder. His interests 
and his heart were with the Low Countries. 

The attitude of the University would have been amusing had 
the circumstances been less tragic. It called in the assistance 
of parliament; the sovereign court did not wish to be compro- 
mised in any adventure and refused to go beyond its own juris- 
diction. The University was not deterred by this refusal. It 
was goaded on by its own pride and by its proletariat, its poor 
students and its mendicant monks. These intellectuals under- 


84 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


took a revolution and, as they needed some one to carry it out, 
they allied themselves with the old, powerful, and violent cor- 
poration of butchers. Monks like Eustache and slaughterers 
like the butcher Caboche were to join forces and the university 
of the great theologian Gerson was to take sides with the rioters. 
She was not however to be able to control them. As under 
Etienne Marcel, Paris was again the scene of revolutions 
(1413). Finally, the rioters, led by an old surgeon, John of 
Troyes, tried to seize the royal family. After several attempts, 
the royal residence was forced, and the “traitors,” for whom 
the people were clamoring, were carried away before the eyes 
of the young dauphin, and some of them were massacred. The 
Duke of Burgundy was present at these scenes of violence which 
were the work of his followers, but they would no longer listen 
to him when he attempted to moderate them. It was a veritable 
terror. In an attempt to pacify the people, the Duke of Berry 
advised promulgating an ordinance which was called the great 
Cabochin Ordinance and which brought together all the reforms 
asked or realized for half a century back. It was not enough 
to satisfy the butchers, and the excesses were continued. But 
the University and the bourgeoisie began to tremble before the 
terrorists. From that time, a reaction set in. The Armagnacs 
were its instrument and Jean sans Peur, having been too deeply 
involved with the terrorizing butchers, was forced to flee. 

A national disaster was again the price of these disorders. 
The new English king, Henry IV, was holding England with 
a firm hand. Against the Jacquerie, the Lollards, and bud- 
ding puritanism, he governed her with the help of the landed 
proprietors and the established Church. His son, Henry V, 
who soon succeeded him, again took up the designs of Edward 
IIT, restored the navy, and landed an army before Harfleur, 
which port was taken after a siege of a month; there was no 
longer a French army or a French navy to stop him. With 
Harfleur, England held the great maritime arsenal of France, 
the mouth of the Seine, and Normandy. As though to prove 
that he was afraid of nothing, Henry V proceeded slowly to- 
wards his base at Calais, aided everywhere by Burgundian 





WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 85 


complicity. Without her knighthood France would have re- 
mained inert. We may deplore the rashness and the lack of 
foresight of this nobility which, as at Crécy and at Poitiers, was 
going forth to be massacred at Agincourt (1415); at least it 
was patriotic. Some Burgundians joined the ranks of the 
Armagnacs to whom belongs the honor of having aroused re- 
sistance to the invader. 

The disaster of Agincourt did not reanimate France; she 
was going to pieces. Through another misfortune, her chances 
for the future receded. Within a few months, three dauphins 
died. The fourth, a son of Charles VI, and still a child, alone 
remained. The long incapacity of the mad king had ended 
only in another minority. The time had come for Henry V 
of England to proclaim himself King of France. Moreover, 
the French were fighting among themselves even in the face 
of the enemy. The queen herself, the Bavarian Isabeau, had 
gone over to the side of Burgundy whose duke was more and 
more popular because his party had been for peace at any price 
with England. Soon the Burgundians opened the gates of 
Paris to Jean sans Peur. The followers of Caboche, who had 
been driven out after their terrorizing, came back eager for 
vengeance. Thousands of the Armagnac party were arrested; 
it was not difficult to reawaken the fury of the butchers and 
the masses. ‘Twice massacres occurred in the prisons. Con- 
ditions were not far different from those of the French Revo- 
lution of September, 1792, and the parallel goes to show that 
the revolution of the eighteenth century was not a miracle or 
unique phenomenon. 

Jean sans Peur ended by establishing a little order in Paris, 
but France was in chaos. There was great confusion of ideas 
and there was no longer any government. The Duke of Bur- 
gundy held the mad king in his power, spoke in his name, 
and had for accomplice, the queen, Isabeau, the indifferent and 
obese Bavarian. The dauphin, Charles, had retired with his 
followers south of the Loire. However, Henry V proceeded 
methodically to conquer France, took Rouen, and installed him- 
self in Normandy. Jean sans Peur was accused of treason by 


86 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


his followers. Doubtless he did not wish to conclude a peace 
with England which would have been shameful, and would 
have aroused the protest of the dauphin; for national resistance 
was again to center about the future king. Jean then sought 
to conciliate the young prince. Two interviews took place, at 
the second of which, at Montereau, an altercation broke out. 
The Duke of Burgundy was assassinated as he himself had 
assassinated the Duke of Orléans (1419). 

This new political crime committed in the presence of the 
dauphin, though not ordered by him, precipitated the closing 
act of the drama. Just as formerly the Orléans party, so now 
the Burgundian party cried for vengeance, and appealed to 
the country. The new Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, 
took this vengeance at a terrible cost to France. It was due to 
him that the shameful treaty of Troyes was signed May 20, 
1420. According to this treaty, Henry V, by marrying a 
daughter of Charles VI, would become king of France at the 
death of Charles and the two crowns would become one. The 
mad king had now entirely lost the light of reason, and cut 
off the Dauphin Charles from all rights to the crown; for in 
the words which he used, “the so-called dauphin,” there was 
a terrible implication which meant that Charles VII was not 
the son of his father. All this meant that France was to lose 
her national government. Shameful as the treaty was, its 
acceptance by the University and all the governing powers of 
France was more so; for as the signature of Charles was null 
and void, the States General consented to give theirs. Even 
Paris acclaimed Henry V, and received him with joy and 
honor. Henry hastened to take possession of the Bastille, the 
Louvre, and Vincennes. From these fortresses, a foreign king 
was to govern the Parisians. It was to this pass that revolutions 
had brought France; they were the sole cause of this unbeliey- 
able abasement. The misery and famine, following these long 
disorders, were so great that Paris, after having lost her sense 
of nationality in these disputes, had lost her dignity as well. 

The nine years that succeeded are marked by but a single 
fortunate event for France. In 1422 Henry V died prema- 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 87 


turely, two months before Charles VI. That is, the English 
king did not come into the inheritance reserved for him by the 
treaty of Troyes. He did not become king of France; he was 
not consecrated at Rheims. He left a son of nine months who 
could neither receive the consecration nor pronounce the oath 
which was the basis of legitimate power. For the cause of 
Charles VIT and for the national cause it was inestimable good 
fortune; that way was now open. One can understand the 
importance of Joan of Are and her marvelous intuition to have 
the dauphin immediately consecrated. 

From 1422 to 1429, the heir to the French crown, circum- 
seribed, denuded of resources, and recognized only by a little 
group of faithful followers, wandered about in those parts of 
his realm which were not occupied by the English. He was 
called the “King of Bourges” where he lived most of the time; 
but he had no authority. He could not even levy soldiers and 
had with him only a few bands of Armagnacs and some Scotch 
guards whom he paid when, by chance, he had the money. He 
could not enter Rheims, still held by the English, and there- 
fore could not receive the usual consecration of the French 
kings. He was regarded merely as a pretender and his rights, 
even his birth, were contested. How can we be hard on the 
vacillations and weaknesses of this unhappy young man of 
twenty years, so poorly prepared for his task (he was the fourth 
son of the mad king), so poorly supported by a demoralized 
country and surrounded by councilors who were quarreling 
among themselves? Charles attempted a reconciliation with 
the Duke of Burgundy but failed. He did, however, succeed 
in marrying the daughter of the Duke of Anjou. He felt that 
he had a national rôle to fill and that this was the only means 
of recovering the crown. He lacked material resources as well 
as moral support, and all his little military enterprises were 
predestined to failure. In the face of a victorious England 
and the powerful house of Burgundy, the King of Bourges 
felt himself crushed. The English regent, the Duke of Bed- 
ford, had again methodically tried to reduce France to submis- 
sion. Orléans, besieged, was on the point of yielding after a 


88 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


long and brave defense. Had this happened, the English would 
have been masters of the west and center of France. The cause 
of Charles seemed to be lost. He thought of retiring to 
Dauphiné and was even advised to leave France. 

In a few weeks all was to be changed. The resistance of 
Orléans had succeeded in arousing the country and had become 
a symbol. The assassination of the Duke of Orléans by the 
Duke of Burgundy and the captivity of Charles of Orléans, 
the son of the victim, the well-known poet, for twenty-five years 
a captive at London, began to arouse national sentiment. Or- 
léans was the city of the Orléans party, the national party, the 
enemy of the Burgundians and of the Cabochins. The heroic 
accounts of this siege spread throughout France and were even 
to reach to Champagne and Lorraine, to the village of Domremy 
where Joan of Arc, dreaming under her trees, heard the mes- 
sages of the saints. The voices told her what to do: “Deliver 
Orléans and consecrate the Dauphin at Rheims.” This idea 
would probably never have occurred to the wisest of the poli- 
ticians living in her day, or if it had, they would have rejected 
it as impossible. 

This was the mission of Joan of Are and she fulfilled it. 
It was the salvation of France. By common consent, in no 
country and in no time has there been a purer heroine or a 
more wonderful story. What we wish to show here is how the 
sublime episode of Joan of Are is in entire harmony with the 
history of France; it continues the past and foreshadows the 
future. 

There is less skepticism about Joan of Are to-day than there 
was in her own time. From the very day that a mysterious force 
urged this young girl of eighteen to leave her father, her 
mother, and her village to save France, she met obstacles at 
every hand. They never discouraged her. Those who believed 
in her, the people first of all, proved to be right. And even those 
who had no faith but who wished well to the realm felt that, 
after all, affairs were so bad that there was nothing risked in 
trying this providential intervention. Only a miracle could 
save the cause of the dauphin, and France was waiting for 





WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 89 


this miracle; for hardly had Joan of Arc left her country 
district of Vaucouleurs to present herself before the dauphin, 
than her name was passed from mouth to mouth, and gave 
courage to the besieged people of Orléans. 

From the most matter-of-fact point of view, that of polities, 
what is most astonishing about this Maid of Orléans is her 
comprehension of the situation, her good sense, and the correct- 
ness of her judgment. She understood that the fate of France 
was one with that of her kings and that it was necessary to 
revive the royal power. The heir to the throne was losing 
hope and perhaps was even doubtful of his own birth. His 
prestige and self-confidence must be restored. This is why the 
first meeting between Joan and Charles VIT is so moving. 
The dauphin, doubtful, put her to the test. When Joan desig- 
nated him and fell on her knees before him, her act carried 
conviction. 

Confidence was restored. Not infrequently even the soldiers 
and politicians who were fondest of Joan did not wish to listen 
to her. Nearly always she was right, her presentiments were 
verified, and she gave forth such a spirit of quiet certainty 
that people did without effort what she told them. Thus the 
siege of Orléans was raised (May 8, 1429). Then, without 
losing a moment, and heedless of the advice, interested or dis- 
interested, of the cautious and shortsighted. Joan led the king to 
Rheims. True wisdom lay in following her inspiration. It 
was the enthusiasm which she inspired that overthrew the Eng- 
lish at Patay who tried to bar her passage, and which made 
possible the taking of Troyes. The Burgundian governors, 
frightened by this popular movement, and receiving no aid 
from Bedford, opened the gates of Châlons and of Rheims. 
The dauphin was there consecrated according to the accus- 
tomed rites. From that time on, the little English prince 
could be nothing but a false king in France. 

After the consecration, France found again in her monarchy 
the condition of her independence and the instrument of her 
salvation. What a miracle could do had been accomplished. 
Joan of Are, after the apotheosis at Rheims had a true presenti- 
ment that her mission was finished. She lacked only the 


90 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


aureole of the martyr. It would have been her dream to lead 
the king to Paris after having conducted him to Rheims. She 
failed before the city that had remained heart and soul Bur- 
gundian: the celebrated “bourgeois of Paris” in his Journal 
insulted the heroine of the “Armagnacs.” She failed again 
before Compiègne. Having fallen into the hands of Jean de 
Ligny, Joan, by the order of the Duke of Burgundy, was 
delivered into the hands of the English. The strife of parties 
continued and was the most decisive element in her trial at 
Rouen. For some, Joan of Arc personified the fatherland; 
for others she represented the hated names of Orléans and of 
Armagnac. Bedford and Winchester, in order to condemn the 
saint to the flames and to take vengeance upon her by discredit- 
ing her cause, again made use of the French civil strife. They 
made use of Cauchon, one of the lights of the University of 
Paris which, as we have seen, sided with the Burgundians and 
was full of rancor. Cauchon consulted the University and it 
declared guilty, and sent to the stake, the Maid who represented 
the Orléans party (May 30, 1431). The hatred of the Uni- 
versity against Joan of Arc is the same which had bound to- 
gether the doctors and butchers, the intellectuals and the Ca- 
bochins. The odium of the trial and the condemnation must 
be divided equally between the English and their French serv- 
ants of the Burgundian party. 

However, one of the great ideas of her whom Villon calls 
“the good lass of Lorraine” had been the reconciliation of the 
French people. Thanks to the national movement which her 
intervention set on foot, the widespread horror at her martyr- 
dom brought her wish to fulfillment. The domination of Eng- 
land was more and more detested. Even Paris was worn out. 
The Duke of Burgundy felt himself abandoned by his fol- 
lowers, and the protection of England began to weigh 
heavily upon him. Four years after the death of Joan of Are 
a reconciliation took place at the Congress of Arras between 
him and Charles VIT, who expressed his regrets for the assassi- 
nation of Jean sans Peur. It was a brief reconciliation. The 
house of Burgundy continued to be the enemy of France, 


WAR AND THE PARIS REVOLUTIONS 91 


but the power of their party was broken. The French party, 
the party of legitimacy, carried the day. A year after the 
treaty of Arras, the Parisians opened their gates to the people 
of the king, and helped to drive out the English garrison. 

But the end was not yet. The English still held a part of 
the realm. The rest was in chaos and misery. Like Charles 
the Wise, Charles VII had everything to do over: administra- 
tion, finance, the army; in a word, the state. And the king 
of France had only the most meager resources. At the sump- 
tuous court of Burgundy, wearing the rich trappings of the 
Golden Fleece, the courtiers made fun of this ridiculous, petty 
king, mounted on his “little trotting nag.” And it was not only 
that Charles had limited resources at his disposal; his country 
had lost the habit of obedience, and the great vassals were 
setting a bad example. One of them, the Duke d’Alencon, 
found guilty of negotiating with England, had to be con- 
demned. 

The fine fire of enthusiasm and patriotism which had taken 
birth at Domremy could not last forever. Above all it could 
_ not take the place of organization and discipline. To establish 
order and to drive out the English was, for twenty years, the 
task of Charles VII. He accomplished it after the manner of 
the Capetians: little by little at first, step by step, placing one 
stone on top of another, aided in his task by men of low birth 
who had a gift for administration; the silversmith, Jacques 
Cœur, and the master of artillery, Jean Bureau. “The well- 
served” was the surname of Charles VII. He had the gift of 
choosing his assistants, of heeding good counsel, of making 
use of devotion; he could even be ungrateful if need be; in 
short, he had the talent of making things work for the good 
of the state. The result was that at the death of the king, 
England held only Calais in France. The victory of Formigny 
(1450) did much to efface the defeats of Crécy and Poitiers 
and Agincourt. 

The English would not have been driven out, at least not so 
quickly, if dissensions had not broken out at home; their regents 
were quarreling. Minorities did not succeed any better with 


92 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


them than with the French. That of Henry VI was fatal to 
them for it led to the civil war which soon broke out between 
the houses of York and Lancaster, the War of the Roses, 
which tore England to pieces at the moment when Germany, 
shaking off her anarchy and lethargy under the hand of the 
Hapsburgs, was again to become a danger to the French. 
With the troubles in England, the Hundred Years’ War came 
to an end. In a very short time after Joan of Arc had been 
burned at the stake in Rouen, the scene changes and we see 
France, hardly delivered from the English, called to the east 
where her frontiers were cruelly incomplete. 

In the hours of his deepest distress, the “King of Bourges” 
had found a support in the emperor, Sigismund. Just as 
Charles V had sent the large “companies” of marauders into 
Spain under Duguesclin, so now Charles VII wishing to rid 
himself of the armed bands which were still infesting France, 
sent these idle marauders into Switzerland to serve the Em- 
peror. This move was to have unsuspected and important con- 
sequences, for the prince who led them to Basle was no other 
than the future Louis XI. By fighting against the Swiss, he 
learned to know them. He will remember them later and take 
them into his service. In the meantime the Swiss cantons were 
winning their independence. ‘The emperor was too weak to 
make them submit and he appealed to the French for aid. 
Seeing this, certain discontented towns of the empire which, 
as an effect of the division of the kingdom of Charlemagne, 
were still loosely attached to it, asked for the protection of the 
King of France. This was the case with Toul and Verdun. 
Metz will join them later. It was in this manner that the 
great struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were 
to begin. Another event which took place far from France, 
was likewise to have important consequences. In 1453 the 
Turks took possession of Constantinople. A long time before, 
they had gained a foothold in Europe and were now becoming 
a European power. Christendom was alarmed. It is a strange 
fact that in the struggle of the future, France was to find in 
Turkey an unexpected ally against the German Empire. 


CHAPTER VII 
LOUIS XI——FRANCE RESUMES HER PROGRESS (1461-1515) 


Tue house of Valois had had from the beginning great 
difficulty in keeping France and the monarchy on an even keel. 
The prestige of royalty was no longer what it had been. Cir- 
cumstances had singularly favored and emboldened the feudal 
lords, the great vassals. The dukes of Burgundy especially had 
become outwardly the equals of the King of France and with 
Picardy and the line of the Somme, they held Paris at their 
mercy. They felt themselves less and less French in proportion 
as their relationship to the king became more remote. Philip 
the Good and even Jean sans Peur had still had some seruples 
about injuring the mother country. Charles the Bold, how- 
ever, was to become a declared enemy. At the time, it did not 
seem impossible that Burgundy might destroy France. 

Charles VITs work of restoration was no more solid than 
that of Charles V had been. In 1461, he died, it was said, of 
anxiety and sorrow. He had abundant cause. His oldest son 
was in revolt against him, and had placed himself at the head 
of a rebellious league. In establishing order in France, Charles 
had made enemies. The French nobility was somewhat fickle; 
sometimes it was faithful, devoted, and ready to pour out its 
blood and be cut to pieces as at Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt; 
but sometimes it was unsubmissive and ranged itself against the 
king. However it was not a caste, a closed aristocracy, and a 
race apart. The great vassals, to be sure, were nearly all of 
the Capetian family. But the nobles would have disappeared 
long before had not their ranks been replenished by commoners 
upon whom the rank of nobility had been bestowed. Every 
rich man, every lord, chafes at discipline; and it was pre- 
cisely the reéstablishment of discipline, both civil and military, 


which was the cause of the enemity against Charles and which 
93 


94 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


brought on the “Praguerie,” or revolts thus named because of 
their similarity to the Hussite troubles in Prague. 

This affair was the more serious in that the heir to the throne 
was involved. Never before, in the history of the house of 
Capet, had a future king been in rebellion against his father. 
Undoubtedly it was a sign of Louis XI’s impatience to reign. 
It was also an indication of the weakness of the monarchy. 
Contemporaries, with good reason, thought it a bad symptom 
and preferred rather the house of Burgundy to the house of 
France divided against itself. But Louis XI was of true Cape- 
tian lineage. He was learning from experience, and we shall 
find him later all the more eager to restore the authority of 
the crown. 

The “Praguerie’ had been decisively repressed by Charles 
VII but scarcely had the dauphin been pardoned before he 
again quarreled with his father, and put himself under the 
protection of the Duke of Burgundy. There he watched and 
learned to know his adversary of future years. In spite of his 
grievances against the dauphin, Charles VII was wise not to 
lay up more disorders for France by excluding him from the 
throne. He did not listen to those who advised him to cede 
Guyenne to his second son; the system of appanages had already 
proved itself too expensive for France. The unity of the 
realm was more precious than anything else and Charles VII 
rendered another service to his country by leaving intact the 
heritage of Louis XI. 

When this once rebellious prince became king, he continued 
the work of his father and if the feudal lords counted on the 
new reign to further their interests, they were to find them- 
selves mistaken. Only, Louis XI was a man of no illusions, 
and he decided wisely that he was not strong enough to combat 
them face to face. Coalitions were a “nightmare” to him. He 
had recourse to arms only when he could not help himself, and 
preferred other means, above all money; he paid whom he 
could not conquer. Avaricious as regards himself, still more 
modest in his dress than his father, he managed to amass four 
hundred thousand crowns to buy a province. Trickery and a 





LOUIS XI—PROGRESS RESUMED 95 


lack of scruples were undoubtedly in his make-up. They were 
also necessities in the situation in which he found himself. To 
divide his enemies, to fight the more feeble, to humiliate him- 
self before the others, to sacrifice his allies in case of necessity, 
to inspire fear when he was the stronger, to submit to affronts 
and await the hour of vengeance; these were not the acts of a 
crusader. Charles the Bold, the “great duke of the West,” 
carried things with a higher hand. In the end, as in the 
fable of the oak tree and the reed, the reed carried the day 
because it was able to bend to the storms. 

Louis XI had thought at first that a few concessions to the 
great vassals would suffice for his security and that he would 
be able, while waiting for something better, to occupy himself 
with other affairs; with Roussillon, for example, which he 
united for the first time with the crown. But the conflict with 
the house of Burgundy was inevitable. The Count of Charolais, 
soon to be known as Charles the Terrible or the Bold, ambitious 
and violent, both English and Portuguese through his mother, 
already governed in the name of the old duke, Philip. Charles 
and Louis held each other in mutual distrust. Everything 
was a source of ill feeling between them, even their negotiations. 
The storm was bound to break. This was exactly what the 
king feared; a coalition of the feudal lords, another “Pra- 
guerie.” As if to punish Louis for his rebellion against his 
father, the coalition included the king’s own brother. It took 
the seductive name of the League of Public Welfare, which 
rallied all the malcontents. It launched a demagogic procla- 
mation in which the illegalities and the arbitrariness of the 
monarch were denounced. A fine piece of irony over the signa- 
ture of Charles the Bold! Louis XI was even accused of 
plotting with England against the French princes when, by a 
good arrangement with Warwick, he had merely insured him- 
self against an English intervention. He replied with good 
sense that, under the preceding reigns, it was the civil wars 
that had delivered France to the English. 

Louis XI had the advantage over the great feudal lords in 
that he had the organization of the monarchy and the perma- 


96 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


nent army left by Charles VII. “The king is always ready,” 
said Charles the Bold in disappointment. When the Duke of 
Burgundy arrived, Louis had already disposed of the Dukes of 
Bourbon and of Nemours; thanks to which the battle at 
Montlhery (1465) was indecisive, and Louis could reénter 
Paris which he kept faithful by excusing her from taxation. 
Treason was everywhere, even in the royal camp; and this ex- 
plains much of the king’s rancor and many of the severities 
which he practiced later. Louis weakness is evident when we 
remember that the battle on which the safety of his capital 
depended was fought only a few leagues from Paris itself. 

In the meantime the forces of Burgundy, Brittany and Lor- 
raine had joined and were threatening Paris. . It was only by 
flatteries and presents that Louis could keep the city from going 
over to the enemy. He judged himself to be in such a precarious 
position that he talked of seeking refuge in Switzerland or with 
his friend, the Duke of Milan. Fortunately the allies of the 
coalition hesitated. Louis profited by this moment of hesita- 
tion to tempt the princes. Strongholds, provinces, money—he 
offered them much, but less, however, than they would have 
been able to seize. At this heavy price, Louis was able to 
ward off the danger and he proved that the pretended League 
of Public Welfare was only a league of greedy individuals. 

Louis XI had had a fortunate escape, but he was left weak 
and without support; furthermore, it was not to be a small 
task to regain what he had ceded—Normandy to one, Guyenne 
to another. France was dismembered. Can we reproach Louis 
XI for having signed the treaty at Conflans only with the idea 
of backing down later? It would fill a volume to enter into 
the details of the policy which he then followed, the various 
intrigues which he started: calling the States General to have 
them declare null and void the cession of Normandy, taking 
back the province from his brother, and encouraging revolts at 
Liége and Dinan against the Duke of Burgundy. 

Charles the Bold, who had just succeeded his father, enter- 
tained vast and dangerous designs. He wished to join, in one 
parcel, the domains made up of bits and pieces, to bind Bur- 





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LOUIS XI—PROGRESS RESUMED 97 


gundy to the Low Countries by Champagne or Lorraine, and 

to govern without having to render homage to the King of 
France or having to respect the customs of the Flemish. Al- 
ready he had terribly chastised the towns of the Meuse; Louis 
felt that his turn was coming and wished to ward off the danger. 
Trusting to his adroitness, he asked for an interview with his 
cousin and, provided with a proper safe-conduct, he presented 
himself at Péronne. It was strange that Louis, a wily fox him- 
self, should not have scented the trap. Hardly had he arrived 
at Péronne than Charles the Bold, alleging a new revolt of the 
people of Liége, for which he held the king responsible, made 
Louis prisoner. He released him only after humiliating him. 
Louis was compelled to go in company with the duke to crush the 
faithful allies of France at Liége. He had to promise also to 
give Champagne to Charles’s brother, the Duke of Lorraine. 
Louis accepted everything, signed everything, and sacrificed the 
people of Liége and his pride to save Champagne. He managed 
so well that, after regaining his liberty, he prevailed upon 
Charles to say that if his brother would consent he might give 
him another province less important than Champagne. Louis 
escaped from the worst predicament of his life. It is hard to 
understand why Charles ever let him go when he once had him 
at his mercy. There can be only one reason: the moral force 
which the king represented, the duty which bound the vassal, 
even the great vassal, to the supreme suzerain. Thus formerly 
the Plantagenets had respected their homage to the King of 
France. The feudal régime carried in itself this important 
corrective. It protected and still served the sovereign who had 
dealt France such hard blows. 

It was following this adventure that Louis XI inflicted, 
upon those who had betrayed him, his most famous punish- 
ments. The cardinal, La Balue, had been involved in setting 
the trap for Louis at Péronne. This prince of the Church 
escaped with his life but he was shut up in one of the iron 
cages that they were using in Italy and of which the cardinal 
himself had recommended the use. These punishments, the 
accounts of which have been preserved in legends, laid hold 


98 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


upon the imagination of the people. This was what Louis 
wanted, and it was one of his easiest tasks. It was necessary 
to inspire fear. He was constantly having to repress seditions 
of the vassal lords or of the towns. Everywhere he found 
enemies. With England, where no one ever knew who was to 
govern from one day to the next, the King of France had ever 
to be on his guard. With Burgundy, in spite of truces, there 
was a permanent state of war. There came a time when Charles 
thought he would put an end to it. Wishing to force the issue, 
he invaded Louis’ realm and besieged Beauvais. But his repu- 
tation had begun to suffer. Beauvais feared the fate of Liége, 
and its inhabitants, even the women, defended the town. The 
Duke of Burgundy was forced to return home without a de- 
cision. It was at this time that some of the more foresighted 
of Charles’s followers began to waver in their allegiance and 
Philip de Comines, among others, went over to the camp of 
Louis. 

In his dealings with his great adversary, Louis adopted the 
policy of prudence. He watched Charles engaging in more and 
more hazardous undertakings; affronting Lorraine, Alsace, 
Germany, and Switzerland. Louis knew that it would be the 
duke’s ruin. From that time on, he forebore to intervene save 
to egg on Charles’s adversaries. He trusted in time, and waited 
for his opportunity. He even gave up Saint-Quentin in order 
that the Duke of Burgundy might turn aside to Switzerland, 
toward Granson and Morat where the Swiss cantons inflicted 
upon him two irretrievable defeats. Fortune no longer favored 
him. Near Nancy, which he wished to make the capital of his 
state, the head of a new Lotharingia, he met with his unhappy 
end (1477). 

For France this was a great good fortune. Without any 
effort on her part, a dangerous enemy had been overthrown. 
Moreover, Charles had no sons; his appanages therefore re- 
turned to the crown. They did not return without difficulty 
to be sure, but it would have been much greater had not the 
rule of Charles ended in disaster. Louis again had to place 
garrisons in Burgundy, Picardy, and in Artois. The Low 





LOUIS XI—PROGRESS RESUMED 99 


Countries remained the heritage of Mary of Burgundy. She 
was to marry, in fact was almost affianced to Maximilian, the 
son of the Emperor Frederick. Louis XI has been reproached 
for not having married her to his son. But the dauphin was 
only eight years old and Mary was bitter against the house of 
France. She carried the Low Countries with her in her Aus- 
trian marriage. Fatal alliance! Three centuries later, Louis 
XV, standing before Mary’s tomb, said, “There lies the origin 
of all our wars.” However, for the moment, the evil did not 
seem to be so great. The Germanic emperor was so feeble, so 
denuded of resources, that his son did not even think of claim- 
ing the entire heritage of Charles the Bold. As for giving to 
Mary a prince of the blood as husband, as Comines suggested, 
Louis refused with good reason. He, no more than his father, 
was desirous of reviving the system of appanages, and possibly 
another Burgundian party. 

Besides, accessions were being made to his territory on every 
hand. The good King René, the King of Aix, died very soon 
and left him Anjou; while Provence, passing to an heir with- 
out children, soon after returned to the crown. The death of 
Mary in an accident put an end to the last difficulties of the 
Burgundian succession. The peace of Arras was concluded 
with Maximilian. Louis was then able to settle down to com- 
parative peace. Picardy, Burgundy, Provence, and Roussillon, 
Maine and Anjou: this was his legacy to France. It was an 
enormous progress, not only because these were large and 
wealthy provinces but because they united and brought to- 
gether what had been scattered and thus constituted a barrier 
against invasions. Michelet put the situation very well when 
he said, “The kingdom, until then open, was now closed for 
the first time and the foundations were laid for a perpetual 
peace for the central provinces.” Furthermore, the great feudal 
lords were dying out. There remained only the house of Brit- 
tany to fear. Louis XI had succeeded in bringing the vassals 
to terms; the Duke of Nemours had been beheaded; the Con- 
stable de Saint-Pol had already been killed for treason. Finally, 
as another result of his reign, a definitive peace, which closed 


100 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the Hundred Years’ War, was signed with England in 1475, 
at Picquigny. 

This great step towards the unity and security of France 
was accomplished without war. Louis XI did not like the risk 
of battles, and kept an army more for intimidating his enemies 
than for fighting. This king lived without display, surrounded 
by obscure men like Oliver le Dain and the doctor, Coctier. 
He was sparing of the blood of his people, and sent to the 
scaffold only those princes who were traitors or rebels. Legend, 
nevertheless, paints him as cruel, and has preserved, even to 
our day, all the gossip of his time which was spread by Bur- 
gundian agents. The masses are romantic and sentimental. 
For them Louis XI, coolly calculating, choosing his victims 
with an eye to their use, remained a sinister figure. They 
pitied Saint-Pol and Nemours, and could hardly refrain from 
admiring Charles the Bold, one of those men who, like Napo- 
leon, struck the imagination even by their tragic end. But for 
Louis XI, the result alone counted. He put far behind him 
pride and self-love. Had he been heroic, chivalrous and even, 
if you like, franker, he would probably have courted danger. 
In difficult moments, he knew how to break away and even to 
humiliate himself. He had only modest ambitions that were 
capable of realization; namely, to round out his domains, to 
give and to give back to France what was hers by right. In 
contrast to him, the Duke of Burgundy forced both time and 
nature. Catastrophe lay in wait for him. However, even up 
to the present time, serious historians have reproached Louis 
XI with having been cruel to illustrious personages and with 
having shed their blood. Like the crowd, they care little for 
the dead bodies heaped up by Charles the Bold, the destroyed 
towns, the annihilated populations. History weeps over La 
Balue, Saint-Pol, and Nemours but passes lightly over the sack 
of Liége. It does not count the thousands of humble lives 
which Louis XI spared and those which he protected by re- 
storing order to France and by fortifying her frontiers. 

This reign whose true glory was to become evident only with 
the lapse of time, assured a long period of solidarity and pros- 


LOUIS XI—PROGRESS RESUMED 101 


perity to France. We shudder to think what would have hap- 
pened if Louis had died some years sooner, before the party of 
the great feudal lords had been defeated. In 1483, his son, 
Charles VIII, was only thirteen years old. Another minority 
began, but under the best possible conditions. The opposition 
of the princes had ceased to be formidable; a woman was able 
to master them. Louis XI had designated for the regency 
his daughter Anne of Beaujeu, the confidante of his policies 
and his thoughts. It was a regency as happy and as capable 
as that of Blanche of Castile. To the lords who were still in 
revolt, the Duke of Orléans at their head, Anne sacrificed the 
most unpopular men at her father’s court, but she preserved his 
work. The princes, in order to strike a blow at the monarchy, 
demanded that the States General be summoned. The regent 
went further than they had bargained for and called represen- 
tatives not only from the provinces, but from all classes, even 
the peasantry; a truly national representation, which came 
furnished with cahiers, lists of grievances, as they were to 
come in 1789. In this assembly, all voices were heard; there 
were brought forward demands for administrative reforms; 
reforms, moreover, which were not ignored, and political theo- 
ries, even that developed by Philip Pot, concerning the sov- 
ereignty of the people. As the regent had foreseen, the hopes 
of the princes were disappointed. The States of 1484, having 
very prudently convened at Tours instead of at Paris, did not 
find their Etienne Marcel. The feudal lords then took up 
arms. But, from the beginning, theirs was a lost cause and 
public opinion passed a wise judgment upon their uprising by 
calling it the “mad war.” Its only result was that the Duke 
of Brittany, the only one of the remaining princes who was 
powerful, was defeated. 

At this moment, the regent was forced to make a very deli- 
cate decision. Hither way there was something to be lost or 
gained. The means of reuniting the Breton crown, always 
suspicious and jealous of its independence, was to marry 
Charles VIII to the heiress of Brittany, the young Duchess 
Anne. But Louis XI, at the treaty of Arras, had agreed that 


102 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the dauphin should marry Marguerite of Austria, daughter of 
Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. Which was it better to 
give up? Brittany or Franche-Comté and Artois, the dowry of 
the Princess Marguerite? It seemed that Maximilian himself 
was to dictate the choice of the French court. The regent 
learned that the ambitious widower had himself married the 
Duchess Anne in secret, by procuration. Maximilian, as mas- 
ter of Brittany, would be an enemy installed in France. This 
union was annulled by the Pope and Charles finally married 
Anne himself. Brittany was to become French. This door 
through which the stranger had always found admittance, was 
closed at last. 

All was going well with France. The Duke of Orléans, the 
first of the princes, the future Louis XII, had become recon- 
eiled with the king who had forgiven him. England was going 
from civil war to civil war. Maximilian had become emperor, 
but the Germanic emperor in his divided Germany continued 
to have more difficulties than power. Neither he nor the Eng- 
lish were able to do anything to prevent the Breton marriage. 

Charles VIII having attained his majority, was at the head 
of a pacified and prosperous state and of the finest army in 
Europe. France was calling upon him to act. She had been 
bored under Louis XI; as has happened to her many a time, 
she was weary of a prosaic life. Another generation had ar- 
rived, the evils of war had been forgotten. The French people 
wanted events and glory. It was a question where to direct 
this need of action. ‘Tasks were not lacking; France was not 
yet complete. In Lorraine and on the Rhine to which Charles 
VIII had directed his attention for but a moment, there re- 
mained much to do; but it was not in this direction that 
imaginations turned. Moreover, in order to marry the Breton 
duchess and to break the project of the Austrian marriage, 
Charles had renounced by treaty both Franche-Comté and 
Artois. To take back his word would have brought about com- 
plications and perhaps dangers. One route remained open and 
public sentiment forced the young king to take it. Popular 
feeling was stronger than reason. Everything conspired to 





LOUIS XI—PROGRESS RESUMED 103 


drag the French into Italy. Wisely, Charles VII and Louis 
XT had refused to support the right over Naples which was 
held by the house of Anjou. They resisted the solicitations of 
the Italian cities. But a spirit of adventure was abroad in 
France. And the sunny lands of Italy were drawing the 
French to the south. In developing commerce—the rise of 
Lyons dates from this time—Louis XI had opened up new 
channels: Lyons and her silks were in close touch with Pied- 
mont and Lombardy. And what is more, he, this miser, had 
given birth to ideas of luxury. It was not only iron cages that 
came from Italy. Italy meant desire, the love of art, of the 
beautiful; it was more than a love of conquest which inspired 
the French. If we look for the results of the brilliant cam- 
paigns of Charles VIII, of his entrance into Rome, of his ad- 
vance to Naples, we shall find them above all in esthetic con- 
siderations. It was a beautiful journey, a true war of mag- 
nificence, and it pleased the French. With what pleasure did 
they talk of the exploits of Bayard and of La Tremoille! 
What a contrast to the drab years of Louis XI, shut up in 
Plessis-léz-Tours, wearing his old hat, and studying his long 
lists of figures! 

There was always in the Italian wars a political idea; it was 
to push aside Maximilian who, having married again, held 
through his second wife, Blanche Sforza, certain rights over 
Milan. It was also to ward off Spain whose princes had seized 
the Kingdom of Naples at the expense of the house of Anjou. 
Italy was wealthy and in a state of anarchy, and was calling 
France to her aid. Savonarola, at Florence, saluted the King 
of France by the titles of liberator and avenger. Everything 
invited Charles VIII to cross the Alps. 

This war, so much desired, had to be paid for by giving 
Roussillon to the King of Aragon, as the price of his neutrality. 
It was also the beginning of infinite complications, of a suc- 
cession of coalitions and leagues up to the day when, through 
the marriage of the son of Maximilian with Jeanne la Folle, the 
Germanic emperor, Charles V, was to become king of Spain 
and the most dangerous power that France had known since 


104 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


she had freed herself from the power of England. France 
found herself face to face with a Germany which, through the 
house of Austria, was again beginning to count for something 
in the affairs of Europe. The Hapsburgs, who had started 
from such humble beginnings, were constantly rising higher 
and higher through their marriages and through the patient 
development of their hereditary domains. How many times 
had France had to reckon with them, in Flanders, even in 
Brittany! She was to find them again in Italy. She would 
have found them elsewhere. The great conflict was approach- 
ing without either side being aware of it. France and Maxi- 
milian negotiated a great deal on the subject of Italy where 
things were in a constant turmoil. They were even allies for 
a moment against the Republic of Venice. 

The expedition of Charles VIII, so brilliant in its beginnings, 
ended badly, fickle Italy having turned against the French 
whom she had called to her aid. France, in order to save her- 
self at Fornovo, had to fight her way through the soldiers of 
the Italian League (1495). This feat of arms saved her face 
and the Italian war continued to be popular in France. This 
war, which brought France nothing but difficulties, was to be 
renewed under Louis XII and he was to be one of the most 
beloved of the French kings. 

Charles VIII, after a very short reign, died of an accident, 
leaving only daughters. Fortunately, French royal power was 
now on a firm basis. Even at the death of the last son of 
Philip the Fair, there had been some trouble at the accession 
of the house of Valois. Louis of Orléans, Louis XIT, succeeded 
his cousin, Charles, without difficulty (1498). He was the 
grandson of that famous victim, Louis of Orléans, whose assassi- 
nation in the streets of Paris, by order of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, had formerly divided all France. All this was very 
far away. The new king himself had, at one time during the 
minority of Charles VIII, forgotten that his family had per- 
sonified the French party, and had taken part in the mad war 
of the princes. He soon regretted and atoned for this error of 
his youth. That is why history has attributed to him the famous 





LOUIS XI—PROGRESS RESUMED 105 


reply to La Tremoille who had at that time, overthrown him 
and taken him prisoner, “The King of France does not deign 
to avenge the insults of the Duke of Orléans.” In order that 
the benefits of the marriage of Charles VIII might not be lost, 
Louis hastened to wed the widow of his cousin, Anne of Brit- 
tany. 

History has given Louis XII the name of “Father of the 
People” which the States General bestowed upon him in 1506. 
His reign, so occupied without with new wars with Italy—his 
foreign policy was not above reproach—was within marked by 
excellent administration. The French seem to have been as 
happy as it is possible for an entire people to be. There are 
few periods when they seem to have been so satisfied with their 
government. History generally records more recriminations 
than eulogies. Almost always the people are complaining about 
something, and declaring that things are going badly. Under 
Louis XII there was a concert of benedictions. France con- 
gratulated herself on her taxes which were moderate, upon her 
police who were efficient, upon her justice which was just. 
Even business itself, usually so exacting, was for once satisfied. 
France had not flourished in like degree since the time of Saint 
Louis. Life was perhaps the more easy in comparison with 
the difficult years of civil wars and invasions through which 
France had just passed. At such moments a people blesses its 
rulers. Undoubtedly, when France is not threatened by some 
great external danger and when she is not torn by factions 
within, she is an easy country to govern. She has all that she 
needs for her happiness. The popularity of Louis was due, to 
a certain degree, to these favorable circumstances. The French 
monarchy was, even in the opinion of its contemporaries, the 
best government which existed at that time. It was conditioned 
by its own traditions; and its method of building up the realm 
left considerable liberty to its geographical divisions and to the 
various classes of its people. It respected the customs and char- 
ters of the recently reannexed provinces, Burgundy and Brit- 
tany, and almost equivalent privileges were extended to the 
other provinces. France, alone in Europe, presented this mix- 


106 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


ture of unity and diversity. Under political and social con- 
ditions very different from those of our own day, she enjoyed 
an enviable existence. Each class had its rights and privi- 
leges, but none was exclusive. The Church was offering an 
opportunity for youthful talent, and into the nobility, there 
was a constant infiltration from the bourgeoisie. The nobles 
were, furthermore, beginning to recognize their obligation to 
serve. Signorial rights were more and more limited and regu- 
lated, and they weighed less and less heavily upon the other 
classes. Custom was becoming law. The whole fabric of govern- 
ment was so harmonious that it aroused the admiration of 
Machiavelli, who had come from a country where all was in con- 
fusion. This government, which, in general, followed the lines 
of moderation and good sense, was well adapted to the French 
temperament. It is easy to understand how the Capetian gov- 
ernment, which had already braved so many storms, should 
have become so deeply rooted, and why France should frequently 
have come back to it and remained faithful to it during so long 
a period of time. 

In his foreign policy Louis XII was far less fortunate. The 
war with Italy which had been resumed, and which retained 
its old fascination, turned out even worse under Louis than 
under Charles VIII. After an auspicious beginning, France 
became entangled in Italian complications. Alliances, leagues, 
with or against the Spaniards, with or against Maximilian, 
with or against the Pope, Julius II, were made and unmade 
from day to day. Louis divided the Kingdom of Naples with 
the King of Spain; then this partition brought dissension and 
the French were defeated at Cerignola (1503). Allied for a 
moment with the emperor or the Pope against the Venetian 
Republic, Louis soon came into conflict with Julius IT who was 
forming a coalition against France consisting of Maximilian, 
Ferdinand the Catholic, Henry VIII of England, the Swiss 
and Venice. France was then at swords’ points with all of 
Europe. In spite of prodigious military exploits, in spite of 
the campaign of Gaston de Foix, as astounding as that of 
Napoleon, in spite of the victory at Ravenna where this young 





LOUIS XI—PROGRESS RESUMED 107 


captain perished, France ended finally by losing Italy at the 
battle of Novara (1513). This was the signal for invasion. 
Henry VIII landed an army at Calais, the terrible fatal gate- 
way which the English still retained in France, and took Tour- 
nai. The Germans, the subjects of the empire, now appeared 
in France for the first time in many years. They besieged 
Dijon accompanied by the Swiss who had become enemies of 
the French. After having fought for their liberty, the cantons 
had turned to militarism. Fortunately the “French fury,” fa- 
mous since Fornovo, inspired a salutary fear. France first 
bought off the Swiss, who had an eye for the main chance, and 
then Henry VIII, who thought the money was easily earned. 
Louis having become reconciled with the Pope, Leo X, the 
other members of the coalition dispersed. The king died soon 
after this crisis. Although it had been easily dispelled, the 
warning was serious; but it was not understood. France, 
brillant and happy, still mourning her “Father of the People,” 
forgot to say to herself, as she ought always to say, “Remember 
that you may be invaded.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


FRANCIS I AND HENRY II—THE STRUGGLE OF FRANCE AGAINST 
THE GERMANIC EMPIRE (1515-1559) 


Tue year 1515 has something joyous and jaunty about it; 
for it is in this year that Francis I, the artist prince, came to 
the throne. France was flourishing; she was developing her 
Latin genius and, under the influence of Italy, was entering 
upon the delights and luxuries of the Renaissance. However, 
somber times were coming, with foreign and civil wars. Charles | 
V was soon to come upon the scene and a religious revolution, 
which was political as well, was all but ready to divide France 
and thus open the country to the foreigner. 

These misfortunes could not be foreseen when Francis I 
succeeded Louis XII. France had not yet had her fill of Italian 
wars. On the eve of the death of Louis XII, preparations were 
being made to reconquer Milan. Francis I, prudent, in spite 
of his youth and his desire for brilliant exploits, assured him- 
self that this time there would be no coalition to fear, and 
boldly crossed the Alps. He had no sooner done so than he 
encountered the Swiss who were holding the country in their 
power. The history of these cantons is interesting for, intoxi- 
cated by their victories in their struggle for liberty, they had 
acquired a taste for war and, from the oppressed, had become 
the oppressors. It is a story that has been repeated many 
times, and has been that of nearly all peoples who have won 
their freedom. The Swiss were rugged soldiers and Francis 
I might well be proud to have put them to flight at Marignano 
after a two days’ battle. He won Milan and thereby a recon- 
ciliation with the Pope. The first Concordat which was to 
last to the time of the Revolution, dates from this time. He 
also won the esteem of those whom he had been fighting. A 


perpetus! peace with the Swiss cantons was signed at Freiburg; 
108 





FRANCIS I AND HENRY II 109 


on both sides the pact has been observed; a thing almost unique 
in history. 

Lombardy, the field of many European battles, was con- 
quered for the third time. This conquest was useful for little 
except to keep it out of the hands of some other power. Already 
such a power was appearing upon the horizon. Patience and 
the art of making advantageous marriages had well served the 
ambitions of the once humble house of Hapsburg. The grand- 
son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy would receive an 
immense heritage; he would have the Low Countries, the arch- 
duchy of Austria, Spain, and through Spain, Naples as well as 
the new treasures of America. The only ambition still open to 
him would be that of becoming emperor as his grandfather 
had been and to control Germany to the extent possible for an 
elected emperor. 

Maximilian died in 1519. In order to prevent that formi- 
dable concentration of power, Francis I conceived the idea of 
offering himself as a candidate for the empire against Charles 
of Austria. There was no particular reason why he should 
not; the choice of the German electors was not limited, and 
some of them were friendly to France, while others could be 
bribed. The contest between the two kings was like a town elec- 
tion. Although only a few princes were the electors, public 
opinion counted and swayed their votes. A campaign was 
carried on against Francis in the German inns and the two 
contestants spared neither money, advertising, promises, nor 
slander. In order to combat the wealth of the French candi- 
date, the great bankers of Augsburg came to Charles’s aid; not 
because he was an Austrian, but because, as prince of the Low 
Countries, he controlled through Antwerp the commerce of 
Germany. The intervention of the bankers was successful and, 
in the final vote, Charles carried the day. The prodigious 
power was created; Spain and Germany were joined. But the 
new empire was to have internal difficulties. Some months 
later Luther burned the papal bull at Wittenberg. Germany 
was to have religious war and she was to have it before France 
had hers. For the French, this was an advantage. A united 


110 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Germany, with an emperor really in control, as Charles V 
dreamed of being, would perhaps have been the death of 
France. 

At least she would have been suffocated. She was blocked 
on the north, on the east and on the side of the Pyrenees. We 
can now understand the instinct which, under so many pre- 
texts, drove her headlong to keep a breathing space on the 
Italian side. The empire of Charles V was immense, almost 
absurdly so; the domain of France had not yet been rounded 
out. She would have to gird up her loins for the contest that 
was sure to come. | 

Both adversaries felt that it would be a serious one and 
both wished to forestall defeat. Each sought alliances. For 
the French there was always the same danger: a coalition into 
which England would enter, that England who, through Calais, 
had always a port of entry. Henry VIII held the balance of 
power and he knew it. He pondered the question. It might 
be a serious thing for England if the emperor, King of Spain, 
should come to dominate Europe. For it seems to be a law of 
European history that it will not endure one overmastering 
power. Henry VIIT allowed himself to be courted by Francis 
I who was trying to win over his minister, Wolsey, and who 
hoped to dazzle and seduce Henry VIII himself at the famous 
interview on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Henry, on the 
other hand, did not repel the advances of Charles and finally 
cast his lot with the emperor who in his turn had not been 
sparing of promises. As a matter of fact, at bottom England 
could not forget that she had been driven out of France and 
she felt that the hour for dismembering her had come. Charles 
V, strong in his English alliance, hesitated no longer. The 
struggle between France and the house of Austria began in 
1521. 

To conquer France, every enemy has always known that he 
must have partisans within the country itself. But the ancient 
factions had disappeared, and as yet others had not been 
formed. Of the leaders of the old feudal order conquered by 
Louis XI, there still remained but one representative and he 


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FRANCIS I AND HENRY II 111 


was guilty of treachery. The Duke-Constable de Bourbon, an 
ambitious and embittered man, dared, although a prince of 
the blood, to conspire with the stranger against the safety of 
the state. It was a serious plot, since the duke was powerful 
because of his family alliances and his vast domains and also 
since as constable, he was chief of the army. Francis I acted 
with promptness and vigor. “We are not going to return to 
the times of Charles VI,” said he. He ordered the arrest of 
the accomplices of the constable and made sure of their con- 
demnation. As for the constable himself, he succeeded in 


escaping and, from that time forward, bore arms against 


France. The horror which this crime inspired was of good 
augury, for it stifled the discontent which the taxes and financial 
sacrifices, necessitated by the war, were already beginning to 
arouse. 

There was fighting on all the frontiers of France and she 
was reduced to taking the defensive after Milan had been lost 
for the third time. It was no longer a question of a war of 
magnificence, but of holding the enemy far from the Alps and 
keeping Italy between him and herself. This protection was 
finally lost. France was then in great danger. The circle about 
her was being drawn closer and closer; the other countries 
thought her doomed. Paris, threatened, quickly surrounded the 
city with trenches. Fortunately the imperialists were stopped 
and defeated in Champagne. Henry VIII, dissatisfied with 
his ally and fearing to involve himself too deeply, retired. At 
one and the same time, France had escaped this danger from 
without and the usual peril, treason, from within. She was 
able to count on the morale of the country. 

She had need of it. Charles V decided to redouble his 
blows. The French generals tried again to detach Italy. After 
eight months of campaigning, it was necessary to withdraw. 
This, time the route from the south was open to invasion. The 
imperialists entered Provence, the Duke de Bourbon at their 
head, and besieged Marseilles whose resistance afforded time for 
the king to come up with his army. The enemy had to raise 
the siege, beat a swift retreat and cross over again into Italy, 


112 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


where Francis thought he saw victory ahead. Instead of vic- 
tory, however, it was disaster. Fortune turned before Pavia 
in 1525 and the king was taken prisoner as John the Good was 
formerly taken at Poitiers. Francis himself said that all was 
lost save life and honor. 

There is no doubt that Charles believed that in holding the 
king he held France just as Edward III had held it after 
Poitiers. But this time there was neither disorder nor treason ; 
public sentiment would not have allowed it. There was indeed 
an abortive plot to take away the regency from Louise of Savoy, 
the mother of the king. A few intriguers and agents of the 
enemy attempted, in vain, to reawaken the Burgundian party 
at Paris and to find again some supporters of the Duke of 
Burgundy within his ancient domains. The regent was care- 
ful not to convoke the States General; France did not want an- 
other Etienne Marcel. The only opposition that Louise en- 
countered was a legal one, that of the parliament of Paris 
which had been, and which perhaps still was, secretly in sym- 
pathy with the Duke de Bourbon. It is worth while to pause 
over this incident for it foreshadows the things which were 
about to happen. 

Through its very functions, the parliament, a judiciary body, 
had taken on a political character. Charged with enregistering 
the edicts, it examined them and thus participated in the legis- 
lative power. It had certain traditions and doctrines; em- 
powered with the right of remonstrance, it criticized and the 
government gave itself liberal airs. A conflict had already 
arisen on the subject of the Concordat which the parliament 
found at once contrary to the liberty of the Gallican Church 
and tending too much to reénforce the authority of the king 
by allowing him the nomination to the ecclesiastical benefices. 
Parliament in this instance, had to bow before the will of the 
king but remained attached to its principle and was especially 
bitter against the negotiator of the Concordat, the Chancellor 
Duprat. We shall find under Mazarin this same opposition of 
parliament to the prime minister. After Pavia, the opportu- 
nity seemed favorable to the great Parisian magistrates to take 


FRANCIS I AND HENRY II 113 


their revenge and acquire popularity by blaming the financiers 
for the French reverses. But, more important still, parliament 
complained that the government had not prosecuted the re- 
ligious reformers—they already called them heretics—who 
were beginning to appear in France. Opposition to Protestant- 
ism took its rise, not in the government, which was indifferent 
to the Reformation, but in one of the organs of public opinion. 
This was to be the case until the seventeenth century and we 
can see the principal characteristic of the wars of religion al- 
ready appearing. On the part of the Catholics, resistance was to 
be spontaneous, while the monarchy was to try to keep the rôle 
of arbitrator. 

At this moment, there were other anxieties and other inter- 
ests to defend. The essential thing was that during the cap- 
tivity of the king, France should remain calm and united. 
Under these circumstances it was of no advantage to the em- 
peror to hold him prisoner. It might have been that without 
anarchy and the Parisian revolutions, the treaty formerly 
wrested from King John would have been void. Charles V did 
not wish to release Francis save on exorbitant terms: taking 
for himself all that had belonged to Charles the Bold; for 
Henry VIII, Normandy, Guyenne and Gascony; for the Duke 
de Bourbon, Dauphiné and Provence. “Better die than do 
that,” replied Francis. Charles kept his captive without ad- 
vancing his own cause any further. He made himself odious, 
even a little ridiculous. Henry VIII began to consider, to per- 
ceive that the emperor was becoming very powerful, that he 
was not living up to his promises, and was not making pay- 
ments; and the House of Commons wanted at least money. The 
French regent had the foresight to offer it. France was lucky 
to have funds and to know how to dispense them. For two 
million gold crowns Henry VIII changed camps. 

Charles V could draw nothing further from his prisoner ex- 
cept that through his lassitude, boredom, and fears lest, his 
own absence being prolonged, order in France might be dis- 
turbed, Francis I accepted the treaty of Madrid, giving his two 
sons as hostages. He warned the emperor, however, that as the 





114 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


treaty had been signed under duress, it would be worthless. 
Charles V had also demanded Burgundy. The king had no 
sooner returned to France than he received from the Burgundy 
deputies the declaration that they wished to remain French 
and a special assembly convened at Cognac, declared that it was 
not in the power of the king to alienate a province of the realm 
(1526). 

In truth Charles V was not ignorant of the fact that the 
treaty would not be effective, but it provided a way out of an 
embarrassing situation. In his overextended empire, difficul- 
ties were not lacking. Wherever he reigned, he was regarded 
as a foreigner. Spain did not like this Fleming and he had had 
to suppress the insurrection of the Spanish towns. One part 
of Germany had gone over to Luther and the Protestant princes 
were defending their independence, their Germanic liberties, 
against the emperor’s project of unification. Finally, there 
were the Turks, already en route to Vienna, who were threat- 
ening the empire through Hungary. In order to defend her- 
self against the Germanic power, France had ever to look for 
allies in central and eastern Europe. The Protestant princes 
and the Turks were the allies nearest at hand. The policy 
known as the “balance of power,” was beginning to take shape. 

The very evening of the battle of Pavia, Francis I had 
secretly sent his ring to Soliman. The sultan and his minister, 
Ibrahim, understood the sign. This was not the first time that 
there had been relations between France and Turkey. They 
had begun in the time of Jacques Cœur and Charles VII. In 
those days they were merely business transactions. It took dire 
necessity to force the king to such a step as an alliance with 
the Turks. “The Turks are keeping the emperor busy and are 
thus assuring the safety of all rulers,” said Francis to the Vene- 
tians. He even went further and brought the pirates of Algiers 
into line against his enemy. This alliance with the Turks, 
however, was the end of the ideal which had inspired the cru- 
sades, the end of the ideal of a united Christendom. Even if 
it had ever existed, or had been able to survive so many wars 
between the nations of Europe, the conception of a great Chris- 


FRANCIS I AND HENRY II 115 


tian republic was now impossible. But in any case, for 
France, this alliance was a matter of life and death. Teuton- 
ism was menacing her, and forcing her to an attitude of de 
fense. The war which ensued was the beginning of the great 
struggles in which the old Europe was so many times to be en- 
gulfed and changed. The Very Christian King sent his ring to 
Soliman. But soon, because the repudiation of the unacceptable 
treaty of Madrid by Francis I had reopened hostilities, Charles 
V, His Catholic Majesty, delivered Rome over to his pied and 
mongrel troops, to his Vandals and his Goths. The sack of the 
Eternal City, in which the Constable de Bourbon, that unfor- 
gettable type of the renegade of his country, met his death, 
startled Europe as a premonition (1527). It may be that the 
concept of a Christendom, a still surviving memory of Roman 
unity, had already become an illusion. It was henceforth only 
a chimera. 

In order to understand the confusion of events that were to 
follow, truces concluded and broken, alliances made and un- 
made, it is necessary to find some guiding thread. How could 
Francis I twice become reconciled with Charles V; the first 
time through the treaty of Cambrai which returned to him his 
two sons given as hostages; the second time, with such cordiality 
that the emperor was received in France? We must remember 
that motives are never simple. In theory it was easy, in order 
to defeat Charles V, for France to join forces with Soliman 
and with the Protestants of Germany. But in Europe, this al- 
hance with the Turks, whose invasions were covering more and 
more territory, was causing much scandal. Charles V ex- 
ploited these fears and his hatred of Francis I, who in turn 
had to resort to ruses, reassurances and explanations in order 
that Charles should not be credited with the réle of defender of 
Catholicism. As for the Protestant princes, banded together 
at Schmalkalde against the emperor, it suddenly occurred to 
them that they were after all Germans and that Charles V had 
protected them in Austria when the Turks were menacing 
Vienna. 

It was not in Europe only that it was difficult for Francis I 


116 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


to maintain his position; it was difficult even in France itself. 
His alliance with the German Protestants raised an internal 
political question from the moment that there were French 
Protestants. When the Reformation appeared in France the 
least that can be said of the attitude of Francis I is that it was 
one of indulgence. His sister, the learned mystic, Margaret 
of Navarre, the friend of Clément Marot, was sympathetic with 
this new movement. The king himself, since the Reformation 
had served him well in Germany, looked upon it without dis- 
pleasure in France. He protected and saved several reformers 
and intervened in behalf of tolerance. But as we have seen, it 
was popular opinion which persecuted the reformers. And the 
Protestant progaganda was growing, was becoming bolder, and 
was encouraging iconoclasts and fanatics. Statues of the Vir- 
gin were broken and a condemnation of the Mass was nailed 
on the very doors of the king’s apartment. The usual fault of 
propagandists is to attempt to compromise those who do not 
combat them and Francis I did not wish to be and could not be 
compromised. What was soon to be the Catholic League was al- 
ready forming. He saw that the reformers (very ill-advisedly) 
were attempting to get him into their hands. He gently but 
firmly disengaged himself. Protestant historians have always 
done him justice even when they have drawn unfavorable con- 
trasts between him and his successors. 

It is easy to understand that the beginning of internal re- 
ligious war disturbed the foreign policy of the king. Undoubt- 
edly a coalition formed by the King of France with Henry VIII, 
then quarreling with Rome, and the German Protestants would 
have been formidable for Charles V. It would not, however, 
have accomplished much if in the face of a Catholic France— 
and this comprised the immense majority of the French—Fran- 
cis I had become the king of the Reformation. Openly to take 
sides with the heretics, considering the state of mind of the coun- 
try, would probably have been to run the risk of a revolution. 
In the meantime, the frequent and violent resistance of the mass 
of people in France to the spread of Protestantism was cooling 
the ardor of her German allies. These are the causes of the 


FRANCIS I AND HENRY II 117 


fluctuations which the policy of Francis underwent after 1538. 

But a sincere and lasting reconciliation between France and 
the house of Austria was not possible so long as the emperor 
was threatening the independence and safety of Europe. War 
broke out again and this time religious divisions counted for 
nothing. The imperialists, although defeated in Italy at 
Cerignola, had invaded France from the north and the French 
had to sign a treaty of peace fifteen leagues from Paris at 
Crépy-en-Laonnois (1544). It was not a peace, only a pre- 
carious truce like the others, which solved nothing and which 
public opinion found humiliating. Following his father’s ex- 
ample at the treaty of Madrid, the dauphin, solicitous of his 
popularity, attested before a notary, that when he became king 
he would not recognize the treaty of Crépy. At the death of 
Francis I, preparations were in progress for new hostilities be- 
tween France and the emperor. 

If France had done nothing else at the time when Henry IT 
became king in 1547, she had built up a policy. Her relations 
with Germany were of supreme importance, as were also her 
eastern frontiers. Italy was but a secondary consideration. 
All the efforts of France had, therefore, to be directed against 
the Germanic Empire, to break it up if possible. The results of 
the war which was bound to come would be determined on the 
line which separates the empire from France, in that Lothar- 
ingia of which France had been deprived for five hundred years 
through the partition of the Carolingian inheritance. The 
struggle against the house of Austria, that is, against Germany, 
led France to recover her frontiers on the banks of the Rhine. 
The rounding out of French unity at all points where it seemed 
most imperfect, became the fixed design of Henry IT. 

At the beginning of the new reign, there came bad news 
from Germany. Charles V was attempting what the Prussian 
kings were only to accomplish four centuries later; namely, 
to become master of a unified Germany and to transform the 
elective empire into an hereditary monarchy. Germany was at 
that time a mosaic of principalities and free towns. Her con- 
stitution, defined by the “Golden Bull,” was at once aristo- 


118 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


cratic and republican. Charles V began by depriving the towns 
of their independence; he then turned his attention to the 
princes. In the same year that Henry II came to the throne, 
the Elector of Saxony was defeated at Mühlberg. Left with- 
out assistance from outside, the German princes were suc- 
cumbing, the house of Austria was centralizing and governing 
Germany. Had he succeeded in this, Charles V would have 
been very near to realizing his dream of dominating all 
Europe. In order to prevent such a catastrophe, it was neces- 
sary to act quickly. With the Turks, the Pope, the Venetian 
Republic, the Italian princes and the German princes, wherever 
it could find adversaries of the emperor, French diplomacy 
was busy. 

One circumstance favorable to Henry was that the Ref- 
ormation had not yet seriously troubled France, while Ger- 
many and England were torn by religious conflicts. For this 
reason, England was prevented from intervening in continental 
affairs. At the same time that French policy was allying itself 
with the Protestant cause in Germany, it was supporting the 
English Catholics. A sister of the Guises, of the house of 
Lorraine, that family already so influential in France, and des- 
tined later to play so great a rôle there, had married the King 
of Scotland. The hand of her daughter, Mary Stuart, was de- 
manded by Edward VI of England but it was refused, and she 
was brought to France and married to the dauphin. Likewise, 
Philip II married Mary Tudor; France and Spain were trying 
equally through the Catholics, to exert political influence in 
England already divided by its religions. For the French, the 
advantage of these religious and political struggles was that 
England was not, for the moment, to be feared. Boulogne, lost 
at the end of the last reign, was retaken, and hope of Calais 
was not abandoned. 

Henry IT was wise to defer the renewal of hostilities with 
the emperor. The great political design of Charles V was en- 
countering obstacles within. The German branch of this 
family did not wish the empire to pass to his son Philip IT of 
Spain. The German Protestants and their princes, in spite of 


FRANCIS I AND HENRY II 119 


their defeat, were still resisting. Kept in a state of ferment 
by the French agents, they concluded the secret treaty of Cham- 
bord which made them allies of France. Henry IT assumed the 
title of “Defender of Germanic Liberty.” Marillac formulated 
this policy as follows: “By secret methods keep the affairs of 
Germany as much stirred up as possible,” a motto which Henry 
IT translated more energetically by the word grabuge, “squab- 
bling.” On their side, the Protestant princes recognized the 
rights of the king over Cambrai, Metz, Toul, and Verdun. All 
was ready for the war which every one felt to be inevitable 
(1552). 

As a prelude to this war, the King of France issued a mani- 
festo in French and German, which bore at its head a Phrygian 
cap, between two swords, with the device, “Liberty.” The 
French monarchy carried on a republican propaganda in Ger- 
many. ‘Toul opened her gates, Metz and Verdun were taken, 
and the French army watered its horses in the Rhine. In the 
meantime, Charles V, defeated by the Elector of Saxony, was 
all but taken prisoner. Germany was on the point of escaping 
him. He hastened to sign the Convention of Passau with the 
Protestants, by which he recognized the Germanic liberties. 
Then, believing Germany pacified, he wished to regain Metz. 
The Duke de Guise hurried to occupy the town, put it in a state 
of defense and, after two months of siege, compelled Charles to 
withdraw (1553). This was a personal triumph for François 
de Guise, a triumph which he was soon to complete in taking 
Calais by another bold stroke. His popularity became very 
great. À soldier of genius had appeared and this great captain 
was to become the leader of a party, a political power. He was 
at one moment to become more powerful than the king himself. 
And it was military glory which was to give him, as well as his 
son, a sort of dictatorship at a time when the government was 
weakening and demagogy appearing. 

The war was prolonged for five years in Italy and the north 
of France without the emperor’s being able to obtain any de- 
cisive result. Success was deserting him. In Germany the 
Protestants were becoming bolder, and were imposing new con- 


120 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


ditions. The sovereignty of each German state in matters of 
religion having been recognized, the unity of the empire be- 
came chimerical. It was at this moment that Charles V, dis- 
couraged and obliged to abandon his dream, not even able to 
transmit the imperial crown to his son, decided to abdicate 
(1556). By this voluntary withdrawal, over which the King 
of France silently rejoiced, he confessed his defeat. Of course 
his son Philip IT still possessed the Low Countries and Spain. 
Under the guise of consolation for the loss of the empire, 
Philip married Mary Tudor. He was to take up the plans of 
his father and like him, only under conditions far less favorable, 
was to attempt to dominate Europe. The first part of the 
struggle against the house of Austria had turned in favor of 
France. 

There were, however, some new misfortunes. Philip IT had 
renewed the war, and had as allies the English of Mary Tudor 
and the Duke of Savoy. This time the enemy turned aside from 
Metz and entered France through the Low Countries, the great 
route of invasion. The Duke of Savoy, by a forced march, 
reached Saint-Quentin which Coligny was defending. An at- 
tempt of the Constable de Montmorency to raise the siege of 
the town was unsuccessful; the French army was crushed, and 
the way to Paris lay open. At this moment only Philip’s hesi- 
tation, his fear of compromising the fruits of a successful cam- 
paign, saved the French from a great disaster. The Duke de 
Guise who was campaigning in Italy, was hastily recalled and 
made lieutenant general. This great captain was a political 
genius. He found France worried, fatigued and demoralized. 
It was necessary to strike a blow to restore public confidence. 
François de Guise thought of Calais, the precious possession 
of England, her last foothold in France. Through extraordi- 
nary boldness and good luck, the town was recaptured in a few 
days (1558). As the defender of Metz and the liberator of 
Calais, Guise became irresistible. In the meantime, his rival, 
Coligny, who was defeated at Saint-Quentin and who with his 
brother, Dandelot, favored the Reformation, was an unfortu- 
nate prisoner. The unequal struggle was already beginning be- 


FRANCIS I AND HENRY II 121 


tween these two who were to be the respective champions of the 
Catholic and Protestant causes. 

When the Duke de Guise had reéstablished the affairs of 
France, peace became possible. It was a peace of liquidation. 
All the contestants were exhausted. Mary Tudor was dead. 
With her, Philip IT lost his English alliance and Queen Eliza- 
beth pronounced herself for Protestantism and widened the 
breach between the Anglican Church and Rome. The King of 
Spain was harassed on the sea by the Turks, as his cousin, the 
Emperor Ferdinand, was by land. The latter, who was also 
having trouble with the German Protestants, had not even 
taken part in the conflict. France regained Saint-Quentin, 
kept Metz, Toul, Verdun, and Calais. But save for Turin, 
she gave up all claim to Italy. It is for this reason that the 
treaty of Catean-Cambrésis was not more glorious. The mili- 
tary party sighed for those Italian campaigns which brought 
promotion and booty, and declared that the abandonment of so 
many conquests was a dishonor. The memoirs of Montluc are 
full of these protests. History has repeated them and, curiously 
enough, instead of registering results has allowed itself to be 
influenced, even at so great a distance, by men who took up 
the pen, as is nearly always the case with authors of memoirs, 
only to complain or boast. 

Henry IT died in the midst of these events, as the result of 
an accident (1559). At the entertainments given in honor of 
the peace, the king took part in a tourney in which the lance 
of Montgomery entered his eye. The death of this ener- 
getic and cool-headed prince came at an unfortunate moment. 
He left only young sons at a time when France was in trouble. 
As is always the case, such long years of war were costly. They 
had exhausted the finances and touched even private fortunes. 
It had been necessary to multiply the loans and taxes, to draw 
money from all possible sources, and to sell some of the public 
offices. Already, at the beginning of the reign of Henry II, 
the provinces of the southwest had revolted against the gabelle 
or salt tax and the insurrection had assumed a revolutionary 
character, proof of which was the famous pamphlet against the 


122 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


“tyrants,” the “Contre un,” written by La Boétie, the friend of 
Montaigne. This “cri républicain,” republican slogan, will soon 
be taken up by the Calvinists who, at first, had been respectful 
towards authority and the established government, as Luther 
and Calvin himself had recommended. 

That there was at the bottom of the Reformation a political 
leaven, a principle of revolt, is hardly to be doubted. In Ger- 
many, the great uprising of the Swabian peasants, then that of 
the Anabaptists of Miinster who professed communism, had 
both coincided with the Protestant preaching. If France 
seemed much more antagonistic to the Reformation which 
gained headway there only slowly, nevertheless, the deteriora- 
tion of her currency and the high cost of living, consequences 
of the war and perhaps also of the sudden influx of American 
gold, had, by impoverishing the middle classes, created discon- 
tent, a favorable ground for political agitation. In France, this 
was the great stimulant to Protestantism which attracted es- 
pecially the bourgeoisie and the nobility, while the populations 
of the country districts, whom the economic crisis had not 
reached, remained untouched. As for those whom a special 
turn of mind, or intellectual, or mystic reasons had converted 
to the reformed religion, they were finally drawn into the civil 
war. The distinction between ‘Huguenots of religion” and 
“Huguenots of state’ was soon effaced. 

Francis I had been compelled to deal with the Protestants 
whose preaching had caused disorders. Under Henry II, the 
incidents were multiplied. There were serious occurrences at 
Paris where the crowd assaulted a meeting which the reformers 
were holding in the Pré aux Clercs. Churches were springing 
up pretty much everywhere, like the one which Calvin founded 
at Geneva; and persecutions, clamored for by the public, drove 
the converts, as usual, to proclaim their faith and seek martyr- 
dom. These were disquieting symptoms. It was clear that 
France would be cut in two; also that the resistance of the 
Catholics would be stronger than the Calvinistic propaganda. 
The crowd demanded punishments for the heretics and never 
found them severe enough. Michelet says of this time: “One 


FRANCIS I AND HENRY II 123 


was suffocated by the throngs at the gallows and the funeral 
pyres. The congregations themselves directed and regulated 
the executions.” Other signs appeared, of a kind to absorb the 
attention of any government; two parties were forming in all 
departments of the state. In the army, Guise and Coligny op- 
posed each other. In parliament, one party acquitted the 
Protestants, the other condemned them to the flames. The magis- 
tracy was bringing discredit upon itself. To put an end to this 
scandal, Henry II delivered a solemn speech in parliament, 
which ended in an even greater furor. One of the councilors, 
Dubourg, a new convert, defied the king, and compared him to 
the biblical tyrant, Ahab. In the midst of the session, Henry 
had some of the high magistrates arrested by his guard. In 
spite of the energy of this reply, it was impossible not to see 
that a crisis was at hand, that the king’s authority was at stake. 


CHAPTER IX 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS BRING FRANCE TO THE VERGE 
OF RUIN 


Tue death of Henry IT precipitated matters; the “grabuge,” 
as it was called, was coming back from Germany into France. 
His son, Francis II, was only sixteen years old and was, more- 
over, a sickly child. It was during his reign of one year, that 
the Catholics and Protestants took up definite positions, while 
a “third party’ was springing up, which benefiting by the ex- 
perience of the League, and become the party of the “politicals,” 
was in the end to carry the day. This “third party” was in 
reality that of the crown. It was represented by the Chancellor 
Michel de L’ Hospital, a friend of Montaigne, a venerable and 
verbose liberal, and had for its brains, as far as planning was 
concerned, the queen mother, Catherine de’ Medici; for Henry 
IT had married this descendant of the Florentine bankers. 

The acknowledged head of the Catholics was the Duke de 
Guise. His great popularity and his military glory stood him 
in good stead. As for the Protestants, they were seeking a 
chief without much success. They had, to be sure, Coligny 
and Dandelot. But Coligny, a soldier, was still taking no 
stand and was content to plead for tolerance. Moreover, a 
prince of the blood would have suited the Calvinists better. 
They looked to the King of Navarre, Antony de Bourbon, whose 
wife, Jeanne d’Albret was turning him toward the Reforma- 
tion, but whose interests and character rendered him hesitant ; 
and to his brother, the Prince de Condé; more resolute and more 
susceptible to the lure of ambition. 

This was the general situation at the beginning of the Wars 
of Religion. ‘There were two great camps in France,” said 


Pasquier. The monarchy, faithful even under its weak 
124 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 125 


princes to its national réle, was forced to maintain the equilib- 
rium and to remain above the factions. These events, so ex- 
tremely confused, are still more obscured by the passion with 
which they have been reported even to our own day. Each 
party accuses the other of having begun the strife. It is, how- 
ever, certain that the Duke de Guise, whether he wished it or 
not, found himself at the head of the Catholics. It was he who 
was most hated by the Protestants, and he was led by that very 
fact to defend himself and to desire power. As uncle of the 
young king, for Mary Stuart was his niece, the accession of 
Francis II gave him an influence in the government which 
was augmented by the fact that his brother, the Cardinal of 
Lorraine, occupied the position which would to-day correspond 
to that of the Minister of the Interior and of Finances. 

Up to this time, the Protestants had only shown themselves 
vigorous in words and violent in pamphlets. They had not yet 
resorted to action. This great step was taken by a desperate 
man, La Renaudie, whose coreligionists appeared to approve his 
actions while in reality they planned to betray him. La 
Renaudie, having united a certain number of gentlemen con- 
verts, proposed that they do away with the Guise party and 
thus obtain freedom for the Protestant religion. In order to 
reassure them, he promised not to touch either the king or the 
“legitimate state of the kingdom.” In reality he planned to 
seize the king and the followers of Guise, to call an assembly of 
the States General, and proclaim the Bourbons. This was the 
conspiracy of Amboise (1560). It was discovered by the 
Cardinal of Lorraine, and the Duke de Guise forestalled La 
Renaudie who was killed at the moment when he was concen- 
trating his forces in the forest of Château-Renaud. By this 
misadventure, the Protestant party was placed in a serious 
position. Already too strong to withdraw, they sought issue 
from their position in rebellion. Their followers took up arms 
at various points; at Lyons, in Dauphiné, and in Provence. 

The service which the Guise party rendered at this time was 
that it saw the necessity of repression and made itself respon- 
sible for it. They needed, however, in order to resist the re- 


126 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


bellious Protestants, a kind of national approbation which they 
did not have; for the Chancellor L’Hospital, upheld by the 
queen mother, was for measures of conciliation. The result 
was that, with the consent of all, the States General—that 
dangerous remedy in troubled times—was called together. 

But Guise and his followers left nothing to chance. Their 
plan was to strike a great blow immediately, and present the 
deputies with a fait accompli. When the States General had 
gathered at Orléans, the King of Navarre and Condé were in- 
vited to present themselves before it. If they refused, they 
would show themselves guilty and deserving of punishment. 
If they came with troops, they would betray a troubled con- 
science. If they came alone, they would place themselves in 
the hands of their adversaries, which was exactly what hap- 
pened. The King of Navarre whose irresolution rendered him 
inoffensive, was frightened by the cold reception tendered him 
and by the strict watch under which he was kept. As for 
Condé, summoned by the king to explain his conduct, he an- 
swered that he was falsely accused by the Guise party. Ar- 
rested and tried he was condemned for treason. The Guises had 
obtained what they had hoped for. In striking at the dukes 
of Bourbon, they were striking at the head of the Protestant 
party. 

The death of Francis II in the same year, 1560, came as a 
blow to the Guises, in the midst of their success. His death 
changed everything, for the new king, Charles IX, was a minor 
and the queen mother and L’Hospital became the veritable 
rulers. One may easily believe that, at this moment, a change 
of dynasty suggested itself to the Guises as it had already done 
to the Protestants. And from a change of dynasty to the sup- 
pression of the monarchical régime, was only a step. A kind of 
revolutionary spirit began to spread. 

An attempt at reconciliation was the program of Catherine 
and of L’ Hospital—a chimerical program—party lines were too 
clearly drawn, and passions too violent. The dexterity of the 
Italian queen mother and the liberalism of the chancellor suc- 
ceeded for a while in postponing irritating questions, which 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 127 


were for the most part questions dealing with certain individ- 
uals. But it was not possible to be so impartial that the bal- 
ance did not swing to one side or another. The Guise party 
deprived of power, the King of Navarre in the council, Condé 
pardoned, amnesty given to the Calvinists; the balance was lean- 
ing to the Protestants who took courage, while the Catholics 
became alarmed. L’Hospital mistook the nature of the prob- 
lem, or rather he did not see it at all. He had not taken account 
of what Sainte-Beuve calls the “primitive republican spirit of 
the Reformed churches and their express purpose of forming 
a state within the State.” L’Hospital thought only of content- 
ing the Calvinists by concession and edicts of tolerance. Not 
seeing clearly the course of events, he weakened the state at 
the worst possible moment. He had thus a heavy responsibility 
in the ensuing massacres and civil wars. The ordinance which 
he issued, according to custom, after the meeting of the States 
General at Orléans, answered the demands of the bourgeois 
deputies who were frightened above all by the expenditures and 
the deficit which was approaching 43 millions, an enormous 
total of that time. The chancellor sought to economize, but he 
did so in a most dangerous way. He diminished the public 
defense, and dismissed the Scotch guard. The reduction of 
pensions and the retirement of many officers on half pay resulted 
in much discontent. But that was not all. The powers of the 
municipalities had increased; it was as if in time of trouble 
the police should be controlled by the communes. L’ Hospital 
thought that liberty would make everything all right; he dis- 
armed the government and armed the parties. Michelet, almost 
in spite of himself treats this liberal as an imbecile. “To 
the angry waves of the sea, to the furious elements, to chaos, 
he said ‘Be Kings.’ ” 

These circumstances explain how, at almost a single touch, 
France broke into flames. In vain the chancellor multiplied 
edicts; no one heeded them. The Calvinists thought that he 
gave them too little, while the Catholics thought he gave them 
too much. The Protestants disturbed the Mass, while the 
Catholics interrupted the Protestant preachers, without either 


128 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


party’s knowing who had begun it. L’Hospital’s strange idea 
of calling together the priests and ministers at Poissy to bring 
about an understanding between the two religions, resulted in 
a violent quarrel, and made the Catholics think that the govern- 
ment was ready to sacrifice their religion. In her rôle of 
conciliator, Catherine de Médicis brought suspicion upon her- 
self. The Duke de Guise, the old Constable de Montmorency, 
and the Marshal de Saint-André had formed a sort of govern- 
ment, the triumvirate. A serious conflict between the two re- 
ligious parties, in which the Duke de Guise was personally in- 
volved, was the signal for civil war. The Protestants, whose 
coreligionists had had the worst of that bloody skirmish, the 
massacre of Vassy, clamored for vengeance and took up arms. 
This was in March, 1562. A veritable civil war began and a 
manifesto of the Prince de Condé opened it. 

François de Guise, with his usual foresight, wished to enter 
into this war under favorable conditions. He had Paris on his 
side, which was to remain Catholic to the very end, and this 
passionate resistance of the capital meant a check to the new 
religion, for France, even then, was nothing more than an 
image of Paris. Guise wished something further—to be sure 
of the government. By a stratagem as bold and calculated as 
that of Orléans, he took possession of the queen mother and the 
young king at Fontainebleau, conducted them to Paris, and 
took over the government. 

The surveillance that Guise imposed upon the royal family 
and to which Catherine submitted with impatience, and against 
which Charles IX and Henry III were later to defend them- 
selves, was most illegal. And yet, without this dictatorship, 
France would have run much greater risks. Guise’s diagnosis 
was swift and sure. He had seen immediately the direction 
events were taking. All civil war invites foreign interference, 
and when a religious principle is involved, it takes on an inter- 
national character. The fear of the Guise party was that the 
Protestants of France would combine with the Protestants out- 
side. As France was at that time on good terms with Germany, 
Guise sought to convince the Germans that there was much less 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 129 


difference between Lutherans and Catholics than between Luth- 
erans and Calvinists. The Cardinal of Lorraine by a policy that 
has brought upon him much reproach, in a famous discourse on 
faith and dogma, even made astonishing concessions to the 
Duke of Wiirttemberg. His policy was successful and after a 
little judicious use of funds, German cavalry was found fight- 
ing in the Catholic ranks against other Germans. Towards 
England which favored Protestantism, the Guise party was 
without means of action. But an alliance with Spain was open 
to Francis. Philip IT had opposed the Reformation in Europe 
and Elizabeth of England was his enemy. Thus, in France, 
each of the two camps found allies. 

If foreign interventions at this time were deplorable, that of 
Spain seemed at the moment least dangerous. Catherine her- 
self had resorted to it to frighten the King of Navarre, whose 
kingdom was thus threatened, and the maneuver had been suc- 
cessful. And so it happened that the entente between the 
Catholic party and Spain came about by regular and diplomatic 
means, while the Protestants, the rebel party, in spite of all its 
efforts, found itself in a bad position to negotiate. Elizabeth 
gave them her support in return for certain promises; first the 
return of Havre and later the restitution of Calais. Condé and 
Coligny, who signed this convention, denied that they had any 
intention of betraying the interests of France. And yet they 
were opening their country to England. 

The year 1562 has been compared to 1793. It was, truly 
enough, a year of massacres and terror in which neither party 
spared the other. The names of Montluc and the Baron des 
Adrets, in the south, have become associated with these pitiless 
struggles. But the Revolution destroyed fewer monuments, 
churches, tombs and statues; for the Protestants took a firm 
stand against “images.” Many places in France still show the 
ruins of that time. Yet the map of beliefs and religions had 
materially changed. For if, in the south, Catholics and 
Protestants, personified by Montluc and Des Adrets, have al- 
ways opposed each other, the west, partly Calvinistic in the 
sixteenth century, witnessed the defeat of the Reformation. It 


130 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


was in Normandy where Condé and Coligny found their main 
support and where the battle took place. For the purpose of 
protecting Havre against the English and securing Rouen, 
Guise met Condé and Coligny near Dreux and won a difficult 
victory, yet a victory none the less. It only remained for him 
to take Orléans, one of the strongholds of Protestantism, when 
he was assassinated by Poltrot de Méré in 1563. The son of 
Francois de Guise was to reply to this ambuscade on the night 
of Saint Bartholomew. To civil and religious war, this crime 
added the motive of vengeance. 

Tn the meantime, events had worked for Catherine de’ Medici. 
The Duke de Guise, that uncrowned king, and the uncertain 
King of Navarre, killed at the siege of Rouen, were both dead. 
The triumvirate had ceased to exist. The Prince de Condé and 
the Protestants were defeated. Catherine, who understood the 
strength of the Catholic party, made use of these circumstances. 
The Calvinist party was discouraged and worn out by the 
struggle. She divided it. She offered peace to Condé and to 
the Protestant noblemen, according them liberty of worship 
which, on the other hand, was refused to whoever was unable to 
celebrate the sacrament in private and in his chateau. The 
honor of the Protestant aristocracy was satisfied, although they 
appeared to abandon their common people. A blow had thus 
been dealt the party, but it was far from being its death blow. 

During this momentary calm in which Charles IX became 
of age, the royal authority and traditions revived. The queen 
mother who kept the directing power, thought that she had at 
last discovered the true formula for equilibrium—a Catholic 
government with legal justice toward the Huguenots. Cather- 
ine flattered herself that she had reéstablished tranquillity in the 
kingdom and that she knew how to manage affairs better than 
Philip II who was engaged in bloody encounters in the Low 
Countries. She was too optimistic. The tranquillity was most 
uncertain. The Protestant party was not yet sufficiently con- 
quered to be content with the place which had been given it 
without making an effort to redress itself. It had among its 
members some fanatics who longed to take up the struggle again, 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 131 


and who, in order to revive the energy of the party, were ex- 
ploiting every incident. In the end they won over Coligny 
who, taking his inspiration both from La Renaudie and Fran- 
cois de Guise, from the conspiracy of Amboise, and the coup 
d'état of Fontainebleau, wished before beginning hostilities, 
to get possession of the person of the king. Did he hope to 
dominate Charles IX or to replace him by a Bourbon? Did he 
have those republican ideas in the back of his mind which 
Michelet ascribes to him? His plans were defeated and so we 
shall never know. In spite of the blindness of L’ Hospital, who 
thought such a bold step impossible, Coligny’s attempt failed, 
and Charles IX, after barely escaping capture at Meaux, took 
refuge in Paris. 

The Protestants had committed a serious blunder. They 
forced the monarchy to regard them as rebels, and alienated 
the sympathy of the third party which respected the crown 
above all else. L’Hospital, held responsible for the catastrophe 
which had so nearly happened, was obliged to resign. Thus, 
influence swung back to the Guise party and repression began 
again. But the royal army was so weak that in two years, in 
spite of a few successes, (at Jarnac, where the Prince do Condé 
was killed, and at Moncontour) it was not able to stamp out the 
sedition. Coligny had as a base of support, La Rochelle, where 
he communicated by sea with his Protestant allies in England 
and the Low Countries. Sometimes he even succeeded in join- 
ing forces with other Calvinist forces formed in the central and 
southern part of France, who had come from Holland or Ger- 
many, and his influence was felt even in Burgundy. ‘This 
third civil war also ended because of weariness on both sides. 
Moreover, Charles IX desired a reconciliation with the Protes- 
tants for reasons of internal politics. Was not an agreement 
better than wars which were ruining France? Moreover, the 
house of Lorraine was becoming powerful, very haughty, and 
the young Henry de Guise, the son of Francis, was beginning 
to give umbrage to the crown. In addition Charles had to be 
on his guard against Philip IT whose “Catholic alliance” was 
none too sincere and who was not sorry to see France enfeebled 


152 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


by divisions. Always advised by his mother, and brought up 
in the politics of the third party, Charles IX, who had even 
had a Protestant nurse, cherished no hatred for the Calvinists. 
He desired reconciliation with them. He had already accorded 
them liberty of conscience. By the peace of 1570 he gave them 
also liberty of worship, except for some few restrictions for the 
sake of public order, and four “places of safety,” La Rochelle, 
Cognac, La Charité, and Montauban. 

In fact, the monarchy had treated with a rebel party as with 
belligerents and this policy, in order to succeed, presupposed a 
general pacification and a vast family reconciliation among the 
French. To obtain it, Charles IX wished to begin at the top. 
The first prince of the blood was the son of Antony of Bourbon 
and the Queen of Navarre. He was the future Henry IV to 
whom the crown would revert if the king and his younger 
brothers died without children. Henry of Bourbon was a 
Protestant. His mother, the ardent Calvinist, Jeanne d’ Albret, 
had taken him to La Rochelle and he had first borne arms under 
Coligny. One could foresee that a serious situation would arise 
on the day when the crown should pass from the Valois to the 
Bourbons, when the principle of heredity should summon to the 
throne a Protestant whom the Catholics would refuse to recog- 
nize. It was, and remained, the greatest difficulty that the 
monarchy had to encounter in all its history. It was necessary, 
therefore, to help and prepare for the fusion, and facilitate the 
transmission of the heritage. The idea of Charles IX, the idea 
which in spite of all opposition he did not renounce, was to 
make his sister, Margaret, the wife of Henry of Bourbon in 
order to bring together the two branches of the family. 

In 1571 Catherine wrote with the joy of great success, “We 
have the Admiral here at Blois.’ Coligny at court meant a 
complete reversal of the situation. The leader of the rebels, 
who had some months earlier almost besieged Paris, and burned 
one of the faubourgs, entered the city at the right hand of the 
king. He became his councilor. With him he made plans for 
a foreign policy based on an alliance with the Prince of Orange 
against Philip II. They even became reconciled with the 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 133 


Queen of England, although she held Mary Stuart a captive 
in prison. A marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of 
Anjou or, in his stead, the Duke d’Alencon was planned. 
Coligny surrendered his places of security as proof that the 
Calvinists were no longer enemies of the state, and he sent his 
troops to deliver the Low Countries from the Spaniards. The 
Spanish War was to bring together all the “good Frenchmen,” 
and the conquest of Flanders was to turn the nation from civil 
war. 

By a too sudden change, the policy of France became Protes- 
tant and Coligny seemed to have gone too far. A great and 
rapid success of his plan might perhaps have carried everything 
with it. But his calculations were faulty. A French undertak- 
ing in the Low Countries disturbed both England and Germany. 
Spain under Philip II was powerful and one could not tell 
where a war with her might lead. Diplomatic circles became 
alarmed at the dangers of this enterprise and they felt that the 
Catholic population was losing strength under the growing 
favor and authority of the Protestants. Above all, the marriage 
of Margaret of Valois and Henry of Bourbon, the first “mixed 
marriage,’ and that without the sanction of the Pope, was 
causing scandal. Sermons were preached against it in Paris. 
Charles IX, however, as this union was the most important part 
of his policy, persisted. He even forced the consent of his 
sister. At Notre Dame, when she still hesitated, it is said that 
the king, with a brusque gesture, forced her to bow her head 
in assent. 

It is in this marriage, so hopefully planned to be the symbol 
of reconciliation among the French, that lay the origin of 
Saint Bartholomew. The vengeance of the Guises against 
Coligny, is not enough to explain this explosion of fury. It is 
probably true that a first attempt directed against Coligny, who 
was only wounded, was inspired by Henry de Guise in reprisal 
for the murder of his father. But the excitement in Paris was 
great. It had been prophesied that the marriage of Henry of 
Bourbon would be a “bloody marriage.” In fact, the govern- 

ment, by its new policy of favor to the Protestants, had placed 


134 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


itself in one of those false positions from which it is impossible 
to issue except by violence. The sincerity of Charles IX cannot 
be questioned. After the attempt against Coligny, he took 
further measures for the protection of the Calvinists. It 
was not till after long hesitations that he finally ranged himself 
with the opposite party and surrendered to the counsels of 
Catherine de’ Medici. His mother, now influenced by different 
sentiments, convinced him that he was placing the monarchy 
in a dangerous position, that Coligny was leading it to destruc- 
tion, and that if the Guise followers should take command of 
the Catholic reaction which was threatening, they would become 
masters of the state. The only plan was to forestall them, and 
strike the Protestant party a fatal blow. 

Saint Bartholomew was then much less the effect of fanati- 
cism than the result of a cautious seesawing policy. The king, 
having favored Coligny, was in an impasse. The Protestants 
were installed in the Louvre with his brother-in-law. How 
could he drive them out? But if he continued to govern with 
Coligny, a revolution might upset them both. How could he get 
rid of Coligny? Another perplexity. It meant also driving out 
Henry de Bourbon to whom the king had just given his sister. 
It meant repudiation of this marriage which had caused so 
much trouble, excited so much opposition, and which had so 
much importance for the future of the monarchy. However, a 
coup d’état by the Guise party, which had refused to leave 
Paris and which the people approved, was imminent. 

The two days which preceded the twenty-fourth of August, 
1572, were full of stormy councils, where were expressed the 
most diverse opinions. The strangest of all and that which 
best shows the situation, was given by Catherine de’ Medici who 
believed that they should leave the field free to the Lorrainers, 
as the Guise party was called, and then turn against them again 
after the latter had suppressed the Calvinists. Thus the mon- 
archy would not be implicated in the bloody affair, and yet 
would be freed of all the nobles and leaders, both Catholic and 
Protestant. This plan appeared complicated, dangerous, un- 
certain, and liable to give the Guise party an authority which it 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 135 


would be difficult to take back from them. Besides, time was 
pressing. It was necessary to decide upon something; it was 
necessary to take some definite action. It was known that the 
Huguenots were coming in a body to accuse the Guise party 
before the king. Charles IX saw himself between two perils, 
and his last hesitations were overcome. 

Far from there having been any premeditation in the massa- 
ere of Saint Bartholomew, it was, on the contrary, the result 
of a kind of panic. The objections of the king were those of 
a man who sees only dangers in all the plans submitted to him. 
Another enlightening feature is that Charles IX began to make 
up his mind when Gondi had suggested to him that the king 
could say to France, “Messieurs de Guise and de Chatillon are 
fighting against each other. I wash my hands of the whole 
affair.” It was not heroic, but this anxiety, this prudence, this 
care to protect himself on all sides, shows that Charles IX felt 
that the fate of the monarchy and the state was at stake. 
Michelet agrees that in the royal council, the hypothesis that 
seemed most to be feared (and it was to be realized later with 
the League) was that a great Catholic party might be organized 
and ranged against the monarchy which had compromised itself 
with the Protestant party. Future events were to prove that 
this hypothesis was correct. This was what decided the fate 
of the Huguenots. 

There was no need to stir up Paris. Not only Coligny and 
the other leaders, but all the Protestants were massacred with 
an enthusiastic fury. Paris had old grievances, both religious 
and political. The little Paris merchants accused the Hugue- 
mots of having upset business by their civil wars. Even the 
Protestant nobles in the Louvre were killed, and there were 
among them some of the fairest names in France. Charles IX 
with great difficulty managed to save his brother-in-law and 
Condé, whom he wished to spare, not only because of family 
feeling, but also because he hoped to have some one to oppose 
to the Guise party. This is the true explanation of that famous 
Day. Later in his “Considérations sur les coups d’ Etat,” Gab- 
riel Naudé was to write that the one of 1572 remained incom- 


136 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


plete because the princes of Lorraine had not met the same fate 
as those of Chatillon. 

The provinces had eagerly followed the example of Paris. 
Almost everywhere the Protestants were killed en masse, as if 
the Catholics had only awaited the signal, and the government 
intervened to moderate this ardor rather than to encourage 
massacre. The effect of this terror on the Calvinists was pro- 
found. Many abjured, especially the nobles and the upper 
bourgeoisie, following the example of Henry de Bourbon, who 
had become converted for the first time. Protestantism, de- 
prived of its leaders, and also deprived of its conservative ele- 
ment, was to show thereafter tendencies more and more republi- 
can and revolutionary. If it flickered out in one part of France, 
it took refuge in the west, at La Rochelle, and in the south 
around the Cévennes where the memory of the Albigensians 
gave it a kind of precedent. Thus the civil war was still un- 
finished. What was finished, however, was the experiment of 
Charles IX, the attempt at collaboration with the Calvinists. 
The fact which remains is that France wished to accept neither 
the Reformation, nor the influence of the reformers in the 
government. 

One must realize that the horror of Saint Bartholomew’s 
Day, spread and magnified as it has been by history, was only 
moderately felt by contemporaries. Charles IX and his mother, 
if troubled at the time of making their decision, were not 
without anxiety afterward. But one seeks in vain for a trace 
of any great reproach on the part of the rest of Europe. In 
fact, the event was judged from the point of view of its political 
results. The French monarchy had escaped a threatening peril ; 
Philip IT found no pleasure in that fact. As for the Protestant 
powers, they thought that France could better maintain the 
equilibrium of Europe against the King of Spain. The Queen 
of England, the Prince of Orange, and the Protestant princes 
of Germany drew nearer to the court of France. With their 
consent, the third son of Catherine de’ Medici, the Duke 
d’Anjou, was elected king of Poland. Louis of Nassau even 
tried to have Charles IX made emperor. 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 137 


The king, still very young, was to die in 1574. With the 
passion which obscures this period of France’s history, it has 
been said that remorse on account of Saint Bartholomew killed 
him. That these terrible scenes had disturbed the imagination 
of Charles IX is to his honor. But this death from pleurisy was 
troubled by other things than memories. In a country where 
for fifty years incessant civil wars had followed a great foreign 
war, there was bound to be suffering and irritation. The “mal- 
contents” had joined with the unconquered Protestants in the 
south and in La Rochelle. And just as the house of Guise was 
allied with the Catholics and the house of Chatillon with the 
Protestants, so the malcontents had with them another great 
family, that of Montmorency, which represented the third party. 
Thus it was easy to foresee new convulsions, but also a new com- 
bination of tendencies and forces, that of the moderate Catho- 
lies united with the Huguenots in a new party under the leader- 
ship of Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre. 

The second troubled and almost fantastic phase of the Wars 
of Religion, presents a curious reversal of the situation. 
France was not to be Protestant. That was an evident fact. 
But the Catholics were still far from assured. Charles IX left 
no son. It was probable that Henry III would leave none. 
Thus the heir to the throne would be Henry of Bourbon, the 
only half-converted Protestant who had already returned to the 
Reformation. Preferably a king, but rather a republic than a 
Huguenot king; this was to be the formula of the League. But 
Charles IX, and after him Henry ITI, these last Valois, more 
accused and maligned than any other kings of France, held fast 
at all risks, to the essential principle, the foundation stone of 
the state, the hereditary monarchy. It was for the sake of 
this principle that Henry III, accused of effeminacy as he was 
also accused of having favored Saint Bartholomew’s Day, was 
to struggle on for fifteen years. In the end, he was to pay for 
it with his life. 

He was in Poland when his brother died and he came back 
to find a divided kingdom and an unstable throne. His younger 


138 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


brother, the Duke d’Alencon, was against him with the coali- 
tion of the malcontents and the Huguenots. Rebellions, upris- 
ings, struggles were everywhere. And the king was not strong 
enough to put an end to these factions. He tried in vain. 
Vainly also, he tried through negotiations to stop a German 
army of twenty thousand horsemen who were marching to join 
the rebels of the west and south. To prevent this formidable 
meeting, Henry III preferred to capitulate and yield of his 
own free will what the rebels would have imposed upon him. 
The Duke d’Alencon received an appanage. The Montmorencys 
resumed their offices. The Protestants obtained freedom of 
worship without restrictions of any sort, as well as their strong- 
holds, their seats in parliament, all that they had been demand- 
ing sword in hand for a quarter of a century, besides a disavowal 
of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, the only amends that could be 
made, four years after the famous day. Once again the mon- 
archy was seeking peace with the Protestants. 

The response from the Catholics was not long in coming, and 
it was violent. It was at this time that the League was formed, 
that League which Charles IX had predicted and fear of which 
had decided him on the days before the great massacre. Fol- 
lowing the example of the Protestants who had raised armies, 
formed a government, and raised up a state against a state, the 
Catholics formed, in their turn, a political association. The 
movement started in Picardy, whose inhabitants refused to give 
up Péronne as a place of security to the Huguenots; but the 
idea had already spread to many other districts when the mani- 
festo of the “Holy League” was issued by Henri de Guise. “Le 
Balafré” the “scarred” (he had just been wounded in the face 
while fighting the German horsemen) was as popular as his 
father had been. The situation created by Francois de Guise 
under the preceding reigns repeated itself; the Catholic party 
was to have a political leader more powerful than the king him- 
self. 

The manifesto of Henri de Guise was not expressly directed 
against the monarchy; but it contained disquieting indications. 
It demanded for the “provinces of this kingdom,” the reéstab- 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 139 


lishment of the “rights, privileges, franchises, and ancient liber- 
ties, such as they were in the time of Clovis, the first Christian 
king, and even better and more profitable ones if they can be 
conceived.” This strange solicitude for old rights and tradi- 
tion hid, it is said, the great idea of the Guise family which 
claimed to be descended from Charlemagne, and wished to make 
its members kings. In any case, the League was no sooner 
formed than it showed its force. Henry II, not to be outdone, 
hastened to recognize it and placed himself at its head. It was 
difficult to rule under such conditions, and the oscillations of the 
monarchy showed its weakness. In its perpetual effort to main- 
tain the equilibrium, instead of directing events it was impelled 
by them. It no longer had even sufficient money for the most 
necessary expenses, nor the authority to raise it. Finally, to 
obtain the indispensable resources, the States General to which 
the League had had only Catholics elected, was called together 
at Blois in 1576. It ended after expressing its confused desires, 
in contradictory votes as well on questions of religion as on 
those of subsidies. Henri de Guise did not come out victorious, 
but the king’s power was much weakened. 

From this date till 1585 the government lived from hand to 
mouth in a state of extreme weakness. The year after the 
meeting of the States at Blois, Henry III, to show his authority, 
announced the dissolution of all Leagues, Protestant as well as 
Catholic. It was in vain. He lacked the means to enforce 
obedience. Many people thought that royalty was nearing its 
end. The king was hardly safe in the Louvre and his court 
resembled that of a little Italian prince, surrounded by plotters 
and assassins. In order to protect himself, he had to keep gun- 
men in his service, who were called the “mignons,” favorites, 
and who were later the Forty-Five. Advised by his mother, he 
tried all the devices of Catherine de’ Medici, and even those of 
Charles IX, to keep the throne—the entente with Elizabeth of 
England and a foreign diversion in a campaign in the Low 
Countries. The expedition failed, and after the defeat at Ant- 
werp, the Duke d’Alencon, fourth son of Henry II, died. From 
that time on, Henry of Bourbon, who had escaped from Paris 


140 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


a long time before, and had returned to Calvinism, became the 
undoubted heir to the throne. This gave the Guise party an 
opportunity to revive the League by exciting the Catholics 
against Henry III, who wished to leave his crown to a Protes- 
tant and impose a “heretic king on France.” 

The League, strongest in Paris, was a minority but a most 
active and violent minority. The petty bourgeoisie and the 
shopkeepers, irritated by the economic crisis, made up the prin- 
cipal element. It is not surprising to find in the “days” of the 
League the characteristics of all the Paris revolutions, those of 
the fourteenth century as well as those of the Fronde and of 
1879. 

In 1576 the League had languished. This time it took many 
months to bring about an explosion. The idea of Henry III 
was to wear out the Catholic and Protestant parties by pitting 
them against each other. While pretending to conform to the 
desires of the Leaguers, he was trying to conciliate the Protes- 
tants. A mistake in judgment disarranged his plans. Against 
his instructions, his lieutenant, the Duke de Joyeuse, charged 
with the duty of holding back the King of Navarre who had 
once more become the leader of the Calvinists, offered Henry 
battle and the opportunity of victory. Le Béarnais, as Henry 
was called because he came from Béarn, was victorious at 
Coutras (1587). It was the first victory that the Protestants 
had gained. Henry of Bourbon profited by it to a certain extent. 
He was already giving the impression that he was comporting 
himself more like a future king of France than as leader of a 
party and that he wished to “leave entire the heritage for which 
he was hoping.” But Coutras produced a profound effect on 
the Catholics. Henry III was suspected of weakness and of 
favoring the enemies of the religion of the state. He was ac- 
cused of treason. Innumerable libels of extraordinary violence 
were published against him. The ery of the League became 
“Sus au roi!” “Down with the King!” The Leaguers again 
demanded the States General. They announced openly that, 
if Henry III were to die, the order of succession would be 
changed and the Cardinal of Bourbon would be called to the 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 141 


throne and not the Protestant, Henry of Navarre. Priests from 
the pulpit accused the king of every vice and crime; it is not 
surprising that such opprobrium still attaches to his memory. 

No government could have suffered like scandal and contin- 
ued. Henry III wished to show his force, and ordered the 
arrest of the preachers who had insulted him. Immediately the 
city was aroused; some of the Leaguers took up arms and sum- 
moned the Duke de Guise who came to Paris, in spite of the 
fact that the king had forbidden it, and was acclaimed by the 
crowd. The city became filled with Leaguers who had come in 
from the neighboring provinces, and the insurrection progressed 
in the face of the powerless authorities; for the Commune of 
Paris controlled the police. The government had to defend it- 
self or abdicate. Henry III resolved on a kind of coup d’état 
and, violating the municipal privilege, summoned a Swiss regi- 
ment and some French guards. Then the Leaguers cried out 
against this illegality and tyranny; barricades were thrown up 
in all the streets, even around the Louvre where the agitators 
thought of entering to take the king. Henry JII was almost 
alone in the center of a hostile Paris. He did not wait to be 
arrested but escaped secretly with a small number of nobles and 
councilors (May, 1588). 

The “Day of the Barricades,” this Parisian insurrection, this 
flight, and the republican sentiments of many of the Leaguers 
show how low the monarchy had fallen. However at Chartres, 
where Henry III had taken refuge, the idea of the state and 
of nationality was still preserved. Foreign influence is seen in 
this conflict of parties. Elizabeth upheld the Protestants, 
Philip IT the League. Spain and England continued in France, 
the strife which they had been carrying on against each 
other for a long time. It was fortunate for France that no 
power was in a position to profit by her internal disorders. 
Germany was divided, England was held in check by Spain, 
while the disaster to the Armada which was scattered off the 
English coasts, deprived Philip of the means of dominating 
Europe. France was, however, so weak that the Duke de Savoy 
could with impunity take from her the marquisate of Saluces. 


142 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


The king, humiliated, was obliged to submit to the demands of 
the “Holy League” ; anarchy was general; the republic which 
the Protestants had been unable to establish was half realized 
by the Catholics. In 1588 the States General of Blois, the tri- 
umph of the League, presented this spectacle. The deputies of 
the League demanded that France should be governed like Eng- 
land and Poland. Through the influence of a facile oratory, the 
taxes were little by little suppressed. Later the League was to 
abolish even the rents and the revenues. 

The king was no longer master in France. The League gov- 
erned in his place, and left him hardly enough to live upon 
decently. Driven from Paris, made ridiculous by the States 
General, he was now no more secure at Blois than in the Louvre. 
He was pursued to his very antechamber and at any moment, 
the Duke de Guise might take possession of him, force him to 
abdicate, and shut him up in a monastery like an obscure 
Merovingian. Henry IIT had not advanced his cause either by 
his shifts of opinions or concessions, or the attempt at the use 
of force in Paris. One last resort remained: to strike at the 
leaders and suppress the princes of the house of Guise. It was 
impossible to do this legally, for the king would find neither a 
parliament nor a tribunal to condemn the princes of Lorraine. 
The idea which had already been suggested to Charles IX on 
Saint Bartholomew’s Day came to the mind of Henry ITI. To 
save the monarchy and the state there remained only one 
means—political assassination. Henry III resolved upon it and 
Guise, even though he was warned, did not think him capable 
of so much daring. His famous “He would not dare” was the 
expression of his disdain, the words of a man who is sure of 
himself. He lived in the chateau itself surrounded by his fol- 
lowers, and the king was almost relegated to his “old study.” 
The assurance of Guise played as great a part in this drama as 
the boldness of the king. Henry III had only his few Gascon 
noblemen to count upon, and they killed the duke with daggers 
and swords as he entered the council chamber (December 23, 
1588). His brother, the cardinal, was killed the next day and 


CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS WARS 143 


the other members of the house of Lorraine and the principal 
Leaguers were arrested. 

This act of violence did not have the result that the king had 
hoped, for although it deprived the League of its leaders, it 
did not suppress it. However, it was a timely act whose indi- 
rect consequences were to be the cure for anarchy. There was 
no longer any hope of an understanding between Henry III and 
the League. It demanded his resignation, governed Paris by 
the Council of Sixteen, and created for France the General 
Council of the League. For the sake of appearances, a king 
was added to this republican régime, and the name of Charles X 
was given to the Cardinal of Bourbon. Thus succession by 
order of primogeniture, the fundamental and tutelary law of 
the kingdom, was threatened and almost overthrown. In this 
disorder, in this revolution which was ruining the work of 
many centuries, there remained one means of safety: it was 
that the king and his legitimate successor, the Protestant prince, 
should act in concert. Henry IIT and Henry of Bourbon be- 
came reconciled and took this great step. They united their 
forces three months after the drama at Blois. The assassination 
of the Duke de Guise had prepared for the regular transmission 
of the power from the Valois to the Bourbons. It had made 
possible the reign of Henry IV. For this inestimable service 
to France, which saved her from anarchy and division, Henry 
IIT was rewarded by assassination and the ingratitude of his- 
torians who have heaped upon him the injuries of the Catholic 
and Protestant pamphlets. 

Thanks to the army that the Béarnais brought to the royal 
cause the troops of the League were driven back and the two 
cousins, the King of France and the King of Navarre, under- 
took the siege of Paris. In the city, passion, frenzy, and that 
indescribable hate which only civil war can engender, reigned. 
A fanatic monk, Jacques Clément, armed with a false letter, 
presented himself at the royal camp at Saint Cloud and, led into 
the presence of the king, killed him with his dagger. The last 
words of Henry III were to designate Henry of Bourbon as his 


146 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the Protestants, who even then had only a moderate confidence 
in him would have abandoned him completely. That he might 
not lose all he had gained, he waited to take his chance, and let 
events decide for him. The joy of Paris at the news of the 
crime at Saint Cloud, this exalting of the regicide by the 
League, was warning enough that the hour had not yet arrived. 
In his declaration of August fourth, Henry was content to state 
that the Catholic religion would be respected and that in six 
months a council should decide what action to take. This half 
measure, perhaps the only one to adopt, did not satisfy all the 
royalists, certain of whom refused to serve him while a good 
third of the Protestant army deserted him. Without the no- 
bility, who were as a rule faithful to him, he would have had 
very few followers about him. 

As King of France, Henry was much weaker than as King 
of Navarre, almost as weak as Henry IIT had been. He was in 
reality no more than a pretender and his only strength lay in 
the principle of heredity. Obliged to raise the siege of Paris, 
he fled to the west of France, pursued by the army of the 
League. He received help and troops from the Queen of Eng- 
land, while the League was aided by the King of Spain. 
Through these civil wars Elizabeth and Philip II sought to 
strike at each other and to get a foothold in France. Henry IV 
did himself honor in refusing to give over Calais at any price. 
Mayenne, the brother of Henri de Guise, who commanded (and 
that badly) the army of the League, was defeated at Arques 
near Dieppe. At Ivry (1590) the day of the “white plume,” 
Henry IV was again victorious. These victories were infinitely 
useful to his cause, though they brought no immediate advan- 
tage. When he returned to the walls of Paris, the city resisted 
as before. 

Paris has undergone many sieges in her long history. But 
this one was fiercer than any other, through the very obstinacy 
of those besieged. Sometimes blockaded, sometimes relieved, 
Paris was practically invested for nearly four years. Twice 
Henry tried to enter by force. Twice he failed. It seemed as 
though the Calvinist king was rejected by the very walls them- 


HENRY IV RESTORES THE MONARCHY 147 


selves. Perhaps he would finally have succeeded by blockade 
and famine, which was terrible, if the Duke of Parma, sent at 
the head of a Spanish army by Philip II, had not forced him to 
retreat. Still Henry IV would not yield, nor would Paris. 
The six months that he had fixed had long since passed, and the 
situation had not changed. Henry still thought that his con- 
version would be a humiliation and more apt to weaken than 
strengthen his cause. It was first necessary that the League 
should realize itself powerless to provide a regular and orderly 
government for France. 

The League’s own government was chaotic and revolutionary. 
It had a king, it is true, but this king, the pretender Charles X, 
Cardinal of Bourbon, was only a figurehead and was, moreover, 
prisoner of his nephew Henry IV as he had been of Henry III. 
This king of the League soon died and his death excited numer- 
ous ambitions. Every one was so sure that Henry IV would 
never succeed in having himself recognized as king, that candi- 
dates for the throne began to present themselves. The King 
of Spain, disregarding the Salic law, claimed it for his daughter 
Tsabella, granddaughter of Henry II. The Duke of Savoy, 
grandson of Francis I, placed himself in the ranks. He be- 
lieved that France would be divided and contented himself 
with Dauphiné and Provence. The Duke of Lorraine was an- 
other candidate, as was also Mayenne, who really believed that 
the “bread was baking for him.” These ambitions opposed and 
nullified each other and Henry IV profited by them. 

However, the masters of Paris were really the “Sixteen,” 
supported by the League. This Catholic Committee of Safety 
reigned by terror and applied to its adversaries, and even to the 
moderates of the League, the classic measures of revolution; the 
law of suspects, seizure of the property of émigrés, proscrip- 
tions and the general ‘clearing out” of the public offices. After 
a summary trial the first president of the parliament and two 
councilors were hanged for “treason.” This act of terrorism 
disturbed Paris even more than the Duke of Mayenne. How far 
would these obscure tyrants go? Already they had summoned 
a Spanish guard and kept sending assurance of loyalty to 


148 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Philip IL The Duke of Mayenne, encouraged by the “politi- 
cals” of the League who were really the most numerous in the 
Parisian population, broke up the faction of the “Sixteen,” 
some of whom were hanged in their turn. Those who did not 
flee were thrown into prison. 

‘The League persisted but its political power was diminished 
and its organization weakened. Mayenne, by striking at dema- 
gogy, was rendering a service to Henry IV although he thought 
he was working only for himself. Moreover weeks were passing 
and nothing was happening; both sides were marking time. 
Henry IV driven back from Paris had, under the same condi- 
tions, failed before Rouen which likewise did not want a 
“heretic king.” This powerlessness of the two camps engen- 
dered a lassitude which in itself led to attempts at reconcilia- 
tion. The party of the politicals, the Third Party, began to 
say openly that it would be better to come to an understanding 
with the King of Navarre. But the difficulty was that Henry 
wished to be recognized without conditions. Already resolved 
to “take the step,” to be converted, he wished his abjuration to 
be voluntary. He intended to owe the crown to legitimacy only 
and did not propose that the monarchy should depend upon 
anything or any person, upon any religion or any pope, or 
upon any authority usurped by a League. All his maneuvers 
tended to preserve the independence of the royal power and to 
avoid even the appearance of a constitution imposed by the 
Leaguers. 

In order that legitimacy should win the day, one more thing 
was necessary. It was that the Holy League should be recog- 
nized as incapable of founding a regular government. The 
States General of 1593, convoked for the election of a king, 
ended in a fiasco. Here again it was the Duke de Mayenne who, 
without meaning to, aided Henry IV. Desirous of occupying 
the vacant throne himself, and of setting aside the claims of the 
infanta whose candidacy was being urged by Philip II, sup- 
porter of the League, Mayenne addressed an appeal to the royal- 
ists and asked them to participate in the States General. Henry 





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Roy! Seas EL Conese: 
Non moins intrepide que Jage. 
Merita le htre de Grand 





Henry 
the 
Fourth 


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HENRY IV RESTORES THE MONARCHY 149 


seized this occasion to affirm his rights and to announce that he 
was ready to become a Catholic. This news, launched at just 
the right moment, produced an immense sensation. Among the 
Leaguers, the group of “politicals” was encouraged. Public 
favor passed to their side and the famous pamphlet, the Satire 
Ménippée, which some of the talented orators and journalists 
among them brought out, ridiculed the irreconcilables and made 
their Spanish allies odious. Even in the states controlled by 
the League, opposition to foreign intervention was growing. 
Voices were raised in protest against the abrogation of the 
Salic law and the candidacy of the Infanta Isabella which was 
proposed by Philip II, and sustained by the legate of the Pope. 
The affair dragged out in debates without end until finally, par- 
liament, the preserver of the laws, took the initiative. By a 
vigorous decree which was immediately made known to May- 
enne, the sovereign court declared that the throne could not be 
occupied by a foreigner. The Spanish intrigue, which had been 
languishing, was crushed at a blow. 

Events were turning in favor of Henry IV and the irre- 
concilables of the League were losing ground. A feeling of 
nationality was awakened which helped the royal claim. Since 
the end of April conferences had been held at Suresnes, be- 
tween the moderate Leaguers and the Catholic royalists, who 
were seeking a solution of the problem. This reconciliation 
was in itself a considerable result, the more so, in that the ne- 
gotiators, feeling themselves supported by public opinion, per- 
sisted in keeping in touch in spite of the difficulties which arose. 
Henry had hoped that the promise of his conversion would 
suffice to bring about his recognition. But it was evident that 
he would have to yield on this point in order to succeed and 
that he would have to be converted first. Moreover, his 
conversion preceding the recognition no longer had the disadvan- 
tages which it presented before the meeting of the States Gen- 
eral. The desire for peace and the need of a regular govern- 
ment had become such that the king no longer ran the risk, 
as he would have done earlier, of becoming converted for noth- 


150 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


ing. As soon as he became a Catholic, the movement in his 
favor would be irresistible. But it was necessary for him to 
become a Catholic in order to start the movement. 

This is in fact what happened. On July 25, 1593, Henry 
TV abjured the Protestant faith in the Church of Saint-Denis, 
a short distance from Paris. The League resisted eight months 
longer though without hope. Its obstinacy at least proves the 
strength of the idea from which it arose; fifteen years later it 
was still the same passion that was to arm Henry’s assassin, 
Ravaillac. Even in its defeat, the League remained victorious 
on one point. It had wrested the state from Protestantism. 
That the legitimate heir to the French throne was a Protes- 
tant had appeared to be a great good fortune for the Calvinist 
cause. This, the League had destroyed. But what the League 
had not understood was the hereditary and national character 
of the monarchy. France had not wished a heretic king, but 
neither had she wanted a foreign or an elected king. Her in- 
stitutions emerged from the tempest intact. The restoration 
of Henry IV—a restoration for him, as for Charles VII— 
consolidated the monarchy whose future, for the last fifty 
years, had hung in the balance. 

The political talents of the king and his genial disposition 
did the rest. He pleased France but his greatest quality was 
his ability to restore order and repose. People passed over 
and even found charming and heroic in him what would have 
been condemned in others: his caprices, his affairs, and even 
his shocking indelicacies. Neither their contemporaries nor 
history have had very severe blame for Gabrielle d’Estrées 
and Henriette d’Entraigues, and Henry IV has even been 
admired that through his amours he earned the name of Vert- 
Galant. La Valliére, Montespan and Maintenon shine with 
the glory of Louis XIV while Louis XV is reviled and the 
virtues of Louis XVI helped him little. It is politics which 
makes the reputation of kings. 

After his abjuration, Henry IV was successful in every- 
thing because the French were tired of anarchy and foreign 
intervention and “hungry to see a king,” according to his say- 


HENRY IV RESTORES THE MONARCHY 151 


ing. As he could not go to Rheims, which was still in the 
hands of the Guise party, he was consecrated at Chartres. He 
negotiated with the Pope to have his excommunication raised. 
In the meantime, the number of his followers was increasing 
daily and he threatened to resume hostilities against those who 
were still rebellious, at the same time allowing them to hope 
for clemency. The League, which had lost its reason for exist- 
ence, began to dissolve. The party of the “politicals” was suc- 
cessful almost everywhere and the Duke of Mayenne, seeing 
that his cause was lost, left Paris whose doors were soon after 
opened to Henry by the remaining Leaguers who had rallied 
to his support. On March 22, 1594, the king made his entry 
into Paris with almost no resistance. The government of the 
League vanished; the Spanish garrison was allowed to with- 
draw without hindrance and a generous amnesty was accorded 
even those who had been most compromised. 

We must not, however, suppose that order and tranquillity 
were restored, and divisions wiped out overnight. Feelings 
had been too deeply stirred, France had been too profoundly 
shaken; and we can imagine the state of anarchy which fol- 
lowed a half century of civil war. In the absence of public 
authority a sort of feudal order had been built up, the de- 
molishing of which was to be the work of Richelieu. Up to 
the very day of his assassination, which came after a long series 
of intrigues, Henry was surrounded by hatred and conspiracies. 
Before he fell in the rue Ferronnerie, he had already escaped 
obscure regicides like Jean Châtel and had been forced to con- 
demn to death such a high conspirator as Biron. It was difficult 
to maintain the balance between the Catholics and the Protes- 
tants; the Catholics always on the watch for heresy and the 
Protestants with their “restless spirit” always greedy for “se- 
curities,” through which they tended to form a state within a 
state. 

Henry IV spent four years more in police operations, in 
negotiations, and all sorts of bargaining, before he had become 
master of the kingdom. He bought those whom he could not 
reduce, and many of the former Leaguers, among whom were 


nee + 


152 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the Guises, sold their allegiance dearly. Mayenne was par- 
doned because he had never agreed to the dismemberment of 
France; the king’s idea, that of national reconciliation, appears 
in this noble motive. 

The League did not really abdicate as an organization until 
the day when Henry IV had received absolution from the 
Pope. It still remained to conquer the obstinacy of Philip IT 
who was not resigned to the revival of France and who still 
kept accomplices there. Henry IV called upon the country 
to rid itself completely of the foreigner. This war of deliver- 
ance was to efface the memory of the civil wars and the plan 
was a good one. Unfortunately, France was so exhausted that 
in spite of a success at Fontaine-Française, she suffered some 
serious reverses. In 1595 Amiens was taken and Paris threat- 
ened. It became necessary to ask aid of England who re 
sponded only after much urging and then demanded, what was 
again refused, permission to place troops in Calais. She gave 
little aid on land but willingly undertook the pursuit of the 
Spaniards on the sea. Spain has never recovered from the 
naval disaster of the Armada. It was only the exhaustion of 
his country which made Philip consent to sign the peace of 
Vervins. He had lost his hold in France and had half lost it 
in the Low Countries. Holland had asserted her independence 
and the new state, the “United Provinces,” formed after bit- 
ter combats for liberty, added an active element to European 
politics. 

Almost at this same time, the Edict of Nantes was signed 
(April 18, 1598). The Protestants had taken as long as the 
League and Spain to recognize that Henry was king. Since 
his conversion, they had not ceased holding assemblies, ad- 
dressing complaints and demands to the government, seeking 
support from without, and even profiting from the embarrass- 
ments and reverses of the government to increase these de- 
mands—as was the case after the disaster at Amiens. It was 
when they saw that peace with Spain was going to be con- 
cluded that they reduced their pretensions and accepted an 
agreement. As a matter of fact, the Edict of Nantes was not 








HENRY IV RESTORES THE MONARCHY 1538 


a gracious act due to the good will of the king, accorded in the 
plenitude of his sovereignty, but a treaty whose articles were 
debated as though between belligerents. Jf Henry IV could 
have helped himself, he would not have paid such a price for 
peace or accepted such dangerous conditions. If the Calvinists 
had not been filled with distrust, if they had been desirous of 
entering into the community instead of remaining organized 
in a party, they would have been contented with liberty of con- 
science. In order to obtain their signature, it was necessary 
to add to this liberty not only political but territorial guaran- 
ties; more than a hundred towns were handed over to them 
among which were some that were of great importance and 
capable of standing a siege, such as La Rochelle, Saumur, 
Montauban and Montpellier. And these places of safety were 
to be kept up at the expense of the public treasury, that is by 
the taxpayers, even the Catholics. Besides, with their synod 
and their assemblies, the Calvinists had the organs of a gov- 
ernment, an autonomy, what might be defined as an ‘‘authorized 
republic.” A like encroachment on public sovereignty would 
be inconceivable in our own day. Even then when the régime 
of privileges and franchises was commonly accepted, the con- 
cessions accorded the Protestant party seemed excessive. They 
were soon to prove dangerous. ‘These conditions were not in 
harmony with the idea of tolerance. Without doubt, Henry 
IV signed in the hope that it was only a first step and that a 
real peace would follow. He had above all to remember that 
the Protestant party was always capable of setting in march 
twenty-five thousand soldiers and of resuming the war. The 
Huguenots had wrested the Edict of Nantes by force just as 
the League had forced Henry’s conversion. Public opinion was 
not deceived and the Edict passed with difficulty, a fact which 
presaged its future revocation. In order to obtain its registra- 
tion, the king had had to negotiate, revise the treaty, and finally 
influence the parliaments either by his eloquence or by his au- 
thority. The parliament of Rouen did not wholly give in until 
1609. 

Henry IV who understood and feared his former core- 


154 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


ligionists could not rest until he had given a severe lesson to 
their protector, the Duke de Bouillon, who, through his prin- 
cipality of Sedan, then outside of France, might be formidable. 
In the meantime, another lesson had been given to the Duke de 
Savoy, who continued to covet the provinces in the southeast. 
A brilliant campaign gave France La Bresse, Le Bugey and 
Gex, while by renouncing the marquisate of Saluces, she showed 
that she had abandoned any thought of conquest in Italy. The 
policy of aggrandizement was taken up again; the patient, 
measured, traditional policy, observing the law of utility and 
possibility, which Richelieu later defined as “completing the 
square field,” in other words, the rounding out of French terri- 
tory. The king bettered his European position still more by 
marrying Marie de Médicis, a relative of the house of Austria 
and of the Pope, Clement VIII. Soon an heir to the throne 
quieted the fear of another Protestant succession as well as of 
another League. After so many setbacks, the monarchy was 
becoming consolidated. 

At the same time, little by little, calm and order were re- 
turning. In the first years of the seventeenth century, the debts 
of the sixteenth began to be liquidated. The economic and 
financial revival was keeping pace with that of politics. With 
Sully, a new type of Protestant man of affairs, Henry IV was 
working to establish the fortunes of France. The destruction 
in the country, the disorder in the administration, and the 
poverty of the families, was immense. When the king desired 
that every one should be able on Sundays, “mettre la poule au 
pot,” “to put a chicken in the pot,” he evoked years of priva- 
tion. When Sully made the other famous remark, “Tilling 
and pasturage are the two breasts of France,” he had in mind 
that very correct idea that agriculture has always been the 
source of French wealth. Reconstruction came then as it al- 
ways does by means of good sense, by work and saving, by 
means of the peasant and bourgeois virtues. On the basis of 
her agriculture and her land which always rewards labor, 
France built up her wealth. Business was improving. Indus- 
tries, encouraged by the government, were being founded. The 


HENRY IV RESTORES THE MONARCHY 155 


spirit of enterprise was reviving, and the French were begin- 
ning to found colonies. 

France was rebuilding and regaining her strength at the 
moment when Europe had need of her. What had saved her 
during the time of her civil wars was the rivalry between 
England and Spain, the struggle of the Low Countries against 
their Spanish masters, and the effacement of the Germanic Em- 
pire. Since Charles V had disappeared, the Hapsburgs of 
Vienna, though keeping the imperial crown, had no real power 
in Germany. The independence of the German princes, the 
progress of Protestantism, and the religious conflicts had ren- 
dered the Hapsburgs inoffensive. There was always the possi- 
bility of their becoming dangerous through their alliance with 
the Hapsburgs of Madrid and the duty of French politics was to 
keep watch of the house of Austria. In the first years of the 
seventeenth century there were many signs that it was awaking 
and preparing to reconquer its authority in Germany by assum- 
ing the leadership of the Catholic movement with the support 
of Philip III. The danger was the same as that under Charles 
V. Henry IV saw it and encouraged the Protestant princes 
to resist. This policy, so natural, was still more difficult than 
in the time of Henry II because Henry IV, more than any 
other, had to avoid the suspicion of sympathy for the cause 
of the Reformation. His intentions could be only too easily 
misunderstood. A purely French foreign policy but one which, 
in the very nature of things, was directed against a Catholic 
power, revived the accusations and suspicions of the old 
Leaguers. 

It was, however, necessary to take some action when the 
matter of the succession of Juliers presented itself. By claim- 
ing this inheritance, the house of Austria was seeking to install 
herself on the left bank of the Rhine. From there she would 
have menaced both the United Provinces of the Low Countries 
and France herself, who could not keep from intervening. The 
policy of Henry IV was that of Francis I and Henry II—to 
oppose the domination of a great power, to protect the inde- 
pendence of the smaller states. In his “great plan” which 


156 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


contemplated universal peace, Sully has left only a caricature 
of this policy of common sense, so adapted to the position of 
France and to her interests. Henry IV was looking for equi- 
librium and not for an Utopia. 

He was ready to drive the Hapsburgs out of Juliers at the 
risk of war, in order to avoid a more serious one in the future. 
These preparations did not go on without murmurs. It was said 
that the king was allying himself with all the Protestants of 
Europe in order to combat the Catholic religion and even the 
Pope. Propagated by the enemy, these fables spread over 
France. Furthermore, there was even a party at the court, 
hostile to the conflict with Austria and Spain. In this excite- 
ment of public opinion which was stirred by the memories of 
the Wars of Religion, there was one weak and unbalanced 
spirit who was thinking of regicide. By assassinating Henry 
IV, on the fourteenth of May, 1610, Ravaillac thought he was 
accomplishing a holy mission. His crime reproduced that of 
Jacques Clément, and showed that the fury of the League was 
not yet entirely spent. 

Henry IV’s nine year old son, Louis XIII, became king. 
The queen mother, Marie de Médicis, was Regent. 


CHAPTER XI 


LOUIS XIII AND RICHELIEU—THE STRUGGLE WITH THE HOUSE 
OF AUSTRIA 


Arter the death of Henry IV, every one feared there would 
be trouble. It was a well-founded fear. The civil wars and 
those of the League were still too near. “The time of the 
kings has passed. That of the princes and great men has 
come.” According to Sully this was what men were saying 
after the crime of Ravaillac. Besides the Calvinistic seditions, 
the princes and aristocrats were making trouble. But the mass 
of the country was anxious to keep the tranquillity which it 
was beginning to enjoy. It was hostile to fanatics and ambitious 
men. Thanks to this general sentiment, France passed through 
these difficult years without serious accident. 

The ministers of Henry IV, who continued to govern in the 
name of the regent, diagnosed the situation well. It was not 
the moment to enter into foreign complications, still less into 
a,war. Villeroy honorably liquidated the great enterprise of 
Henry IV. France contented herself with taking the town 
of Juliers in concert with Holland, in order that it might not 
be left to the imperialists, and with giving it back to her allies 
in Germany. To reassure herself with regard to Spain, the 
marriage project planned during the lifetime of the king was 
realized and the young Louis XIII married Anne of Austria. 

This policy served as pretext for an opposition which had 
nothing national about it. The Protestants feared, or pre- 
tended to fear that they were menaced by the new Catholic 
alliances. The princes of the two religions, Condé, Soissons, 
Mayenne, Bouillon, Nevers and Vendôme formed a league and 
took up arms. Warned by her confidential adviser, Concini, 


who had become the Marshal d’Ancre, Marie de Médicis pre- 
157 


158 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


ferred to negotiate with the rebels rather than run the risk of a 
civil war. She appeased them by places and pensions and, as 
they had demanded the calling of the States General, she took 
them at their word, though not without first having taken pains 
to show the young king to the country. He journeyed through 
the provinces of the west, which were still being agitated by 
Vendôme. On his return from this journey, which produced 
an excellent impression, Louis XIII was declared of age and 
the States were convoked. As the government was stronger 
at this moment, the maneuver of the princes turned against 
themselves. 

The States General of 1614 were to be the last before those 
of 1789. They discredited themselves as an institution be- 
cause they showed an utter indifference to the general good. 
Each of the three orders was thinking above all else of defend- 
ing its own particular interests. The nobles objected to the 
fact that the right to certain hereditary offices, especially in 
the magistracy, could be bought and sold. This virtually con- 
stituted another aristocracy for, in this way, members of the 
Third Estate came to belong to what was known as the “noblesse 
de robe.” This was really the essence of the celebrated quarrel 
of the paulette. The question at issue was really whether a 
position in the magistracy was hereditary and whether the 
incumbent had the right to dispose of his position or charge. 
It irritated the families in parliament who were threatened 
in the hereditary right to their offices. As for the clergy, its 
orator was the young Bishop of Lucon, Armand du Plessis de 
Richelieu, the man of the future. Richelieu complained that 
his order had been removed from the public functions and that 
the ecclesiastics were “more robbed than any other of the special 
interests.” Thus Richelieu was adroitly preparing his own 
candidacy and the spectacle which the nobility and the Third 
Estate had presented justified his language. Of the three 
orders, it was the first two which the government most feared 
because of their independence; while the Third Estate, always 
interested in material questions, was much more docile. The 
authorities hastened to dissolve the States after having prom- 


LOUIS XIII AND RICHELIEU 159 


ised to suppress the venality in the sale of offices. But the 
government made up its mind never to convoke the States 
General again. 

Concini’s bad reputation which, in spite of the favorable 
testimony of Richelieu, has come down through history, arises 
from the intrigues of the parliaments, which began from this 
moment. Making offices hereditary was undoubtedly an 
abuse. The bourgeoisie who profited by it were attached to it. 
In order to protect what they considered their rights, parlia- 
ment played politics. In their protests, they attacked the 
Florentine, Concini, as they were later to attack Mazarin whom 
he resembled. This agitation of the gentlemen of the robe 
who pretended to speak in the name of the general good, aroused 
the opposition of the princes and this in turn aroused the 
Protestants. In the midst of these disorders, Concini called 
to the government some energetic men, among them Richelieu 
who was named secretary of state for war and who set himself, 
as he immediately announced, “to chastise the disturbers.” 

If it were only for having found Richelieu, Concini ought 
not to pass for so poor a man. His fault was that he loved 
money as well as power; hence his unpopularity. In the high 
position which he owed to the favor of Marie de Médicis, he 
also lacked tact and prudence and he humiliated the young 
king by keeping him apart from the affairs of the kingdom. 
Louis XIII had just reached the age of sixteen. He con- 
fided in a gentleman of Provence, Charles d’Albert de Luynes, 
who was in his meager suite and who had no trouble in con- 
vincing him that his authority was being usurped by the Mar- 
shal d’Ancre. But the question was how to overturn this all- 
powerful Florentine, master of the government, the finances, 
and the army. There was no other resource but boldness. On 
April 24, 1615, when Concini was entering the Louvre, he was 
arrested in the name of the king, by Vitry, captain of the 
guards, and when he called for help he was shot. “I am now the 
king,” said Louis XIII to those who were congratulating him. 
He dismissed the collaborators of Concini, even Richelieu him- 
self, to whom he addressed some severe reproaches which 


160 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Luynes hastened to attenuate, divining the future of the Bishop 
of Lucon. Marie de Médicis was removed from the court. 

Since the death of Henry IV, no matter who had held the 
power, the policy had hardly changed. Like the others, Luynes 
wished to avoid foreign undertakings and a conflict with Spain; 
within the realm he wished to maintain order and to restrain 
the Protestants. In the meantime, there were preparing in 
Europe events which soon would prevent France from remain- 
ing neutral. The conflict between Catholics and Protestants 
was beginning again in Germany. In truth, although it was 
not immediately visible, it was not a religious but a political 
struggle. The house of Austria was resuming the plans of 
Charles V. She was Catholicizing Germany in order to domi- 
nate her. Bohemia (the Czechoslovakia of to-day) had begun 
her resistance by the famous attack upon the representatives 
of the emperor at the chateau of Prague. She had taken for 
king, the Elector Palatine, leader of the Evangelical Union. 
The Hungarians in their turn were revolting. The emperor, 
Ferdinand, saw himself in danger and sought help from 
without. He turned to France whom he solicited both in 
the name of the Catholic religion and the solidarity of mon- 
archies. 

The French government had to make a decision and the 
choice was difficult. To come to the aid of the house of 
Austria was contrary to the interests and the safety of France. 
To support the German Protestants was to awaken the distrust 
of the French Catholics and to embolden her own Protestants 
who were becoming restless in the south. The Council decided 
to intervene only to advise the German Evangelical Union to 
preserve peace. It feared in fact to be dragged into a great 
central European conflict, and attempted to prevent it through 
the ordinary channels of diplomatic mediations. It is only 
rarely that this method arrests the great currents of history. 
Soon the insurgent Czechs were crushed at the battle of White 
Mountain. For Europe this was the “thunderbolt” which the 
battle of Sadova was to reproduce at a later day. The power 
of the emperor was increased by this victory which indirectly 


LOUIS XIII AND RICHELIEU 161 


affected France. The house of Austria was becoming danger- 
ous again. However prudent the government of France might 
be, however much it might dislike to go to war, it would finally 
be forced to intervene. 

Before France could take up her national policy, before she 
could enter actively into European affairs, she would have to 
secure peace within her own borders. At the moment when 
Luynes died, the south was still troubled by the Calvinists, and 
the king, who had come in person to take Montauban, had to 
raise the siege. France had need of a firm government which 
should establish order within before passing to any foreign 
undertaking. Furthermore, it would be necessary to prepare 
for this action by means of alliances. The circumspect pace 
which Richelieu followed justified the abstention of his prede- 
CeSSOrs. 

He came to power only in 1624. Louis XIIT could hardly 
forgive him for having been Concini’s man and the candidate 
of the queen mother. Having become cardinal, his prestige 
had grown and he had known how to make himself indispen- 
sable. In the Council, he was soon the leader and without 
bluster and by prudent and carefully circumscribed plans, he 
began building up the foreign policy of France. The point 
which he chose for his first move was important but did not 
risk setting all Europe in motion. It was the Swiss valley of 
the Valteline through which the imperialists were passing 
freely into Italy. By liberating the Valteline from the Aus- 
trian garrisons, France cut the emperor’s communications with 
Spain. 

This rather complicated affair was in process when the French 
Protestants started a revolt, taking La Rochelle as base, and 
putting Richelieu in great embarrassment. In order to com- 
bat the house of Austria it was necessary to enlist the sympa- 
thies of the Protestant allies—the German princes, the Low 
Countries, and England. It was for this reason that Henriette 
of France married Charles I. But these alliances offended 
those French Catholics who were still animated by the spirit 
of the League and at the same time they aroused the Protestants, 


162 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


never weary of complaining. Richelieu was still far from 
having the country in hand and his declaration that he intended 
to punish the trouble makers disturbed those who were un- 
willing to compromise. It was necessary to break up the cabal 
which was forming around Gaston d’Orléans. Chalais, who 
was intrusted with the task of keeping watch over this trouble- 
some young prince, had taken part in the plot and was be 
headed. It is at this same time also that two young noblemen 
who had defied the edict against dueling were sent to the 
scaffold. In order to forestall and stop greater disorders, 
Richelieu with the approval of Louis XIII, was establishing 
discipline with an iron hand. 

The position of France in Europe was no less difficult to 
maintain. Richelieu, anxious about what was happening in 
the interior, had hurriedly made peace with Spain; then the 
English turned against him. It is true that in taking up the 
projects of Henry IV he had conceived the idea of giving France 
a navy; for almost a century she had had none and she needed 
it to carry out her great design against Spain which Richelieu 
refused to give up. She needed one also in order to maintain 
her own position beside the great maritime powers, England 
and Holland, who were becoming powerful and beginning to 
quarrel over their colonies. And finally she needed one in 
order to put an end to the trouble with the Protestants who, 
from the port of La Rochelle, kept all France in check because 
she had no arms upon the sea. 

All this distracted France’s attention from the essential con- 
sideration, which was Germany. Never was the country so 
divided between land and sea. But first of all the Calvinist 
rebellion had to be put down. The English who had landed on 
the Ile de Ré to bring aid to the Protestants were, fortunately, 
driven out. It was still necessary to bring La Rochelle to terms. 
This required a long siege which has become famous and in 
which Richelieu showed his tenacity. Upon the success of this 
enterprise all the rest depended. When La Rochelle had once 
capitulated, after a second defeat of the English, it was a 
simple matter to take the last rebellious towns in the south. 


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LOUIS XIII AND RICHELIEU 163 


The year 1629 marked the final defeat of Protestantism as a 
political party and as a state within a state. 

Delivered from this internal danger, Richelieu had still to 
defend his personal situation against the opposition which was 
grouped around Monsieur and the queen mother. Assured of 
the support of Louis XIIT after the “Day of the Dupes” * 
Richelieu nevertheless had to combat the intrigues and cabals to 
which the brother of the king was lending his aid. This period 
offers a striking resemblance to the reign of Louis XI and 
Louis XIII was equally severe towards those guilty of sedi- 
tion: Marshal de Montmorency, governor of Languedoc, who 
had espoused the cause of Gaston d’Orléans, was beheaded. 
Up to the very end of his reign there were to be plots and 
rebellions of a more or less serious nature, which Spain en- 
couraged and which are inseparable from all great foreign 
undertakings because they constitute a means of attack or de- 
fense for the enemy. The defeat of the Protestant party was, 
however, a capital advantage. The other agitations and di- 
versions of the princes and aristocrats were thereby rendered 
less dangerous. But although the taking of La Rochelle was 
popular, we are surprised at the murmurs which the execution 
of Montmorency excited as did later that of the conspirator, 
Cing-Mars, and his accomplice, De Thou. Just as the victims 
of Louis XI had seemed pitiful, so did those of Richelieu. 
They became romantic figures. “Sometimes,” said the Cardi- 
nal, “the people blame those things which are most useful and 
necessary to them.” 

Order was finally almost established at the moment when 
France could no longer avoid intervention in Germany. 
Against the growing power of the house of Austria, which was 
again taking up the work of unification of Charles V, the 
Protestant princes had first been supported by the Danes. Den- 
mark having been conquered, Sweden took her place. Gus- 
tavus-Adolphus, a champion of Protestantism, won some 





1The day when Marie de Médicis and Monsieur, who thought they had 
accomplished the overthrow of Richelieu, and were receiving congratula- 
tions for it, found that Louis had reinstated him (1630). 


164 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


astounding victories over the imperial arms, which retarded by 
that much the hour when France herself would have to enter the 
struggle. However, Gustavus-Adolphus gave to the war a re- 
ligious character which did not altogether please Richelieu. 
The Swedish king appeared as the champion of the Reforma- 
tion and although Richelieu was contracting Protestant alliances 
against the Emperor Ferdinand, he did not care to increase the 
political power of Protestantism in Europe, and unite all that 
was Catholic around the house of Austria. There was a balance 
to be kept. However, when Gustavus-Adolphus was killed in 
his last victory, that of Lutzen, France lost an important ally 
(1632). Richelieu was still reluctant to enter directly into the 
struggle. It cost less to support the enemies of the emperor 
by subsidies. For two years more he postponed the moment 
for entering the war. The Protestant League of Germany, 
aided by the Swedes, were still holding their own. The great 
and powerful general of the imperialists, the famous Wallen- 
stein, was in revolt against Ferdinand, and was almost a king 
in the midst of his army. Richelieu was hoping that, thanks to 
these events, he might advance as far as the Rhine and realize 
what he called his “pré carré” his square field; in other words, 
that he might round out the frontiers of France. As a matter 
of fact, Lorraine, whose duke had lent himself to the intrigues 
of Gaston d’Orléans, was taken. Richelieu put garrisons in 
Alsace whose inhabitants had asked for the protection of France, 
fearing that their country might serve as a battlefield for the 
two parties who were seeking to master Germany. But Wallen- 
stein was assassinated and the imperial authority was, there- 
fore, strengthened again. Spain put her formidable infantry 
at the disposition of the emperor; the Swedes began to fall 
back; the Protestant League was defeated at Nôrdlingen. 
France had to intervene or leave Europe to the domination of 
Austria. 

This was in 1635. For twenty-five years France had kept 
out of the war. This time it came to seek her out and Richelieu 
was forced into it. As in the preceding century, France found 
that it was no small affair to war against Austria. After a few 


LOUIS XIII AND RICHELIEU 165 


successes in the Low Countries her troops were outflanked, 
and the enemy penetrated into France. The taking of Corbie 
by the Spaniards in August, 1636, recalled the fact that France 
was vulnerable and that Paris was dangerously near the fron- 
tier. Richelieu and Louis XIII remained in the capital, thus 
checking the beginnings of a panic and immediately there oc- 
curred one of those patriotic movements to which the French 
people are accustomed but which had not been seen during the 
civil wars. The “year of Corbie” greatly impressed the con- 
temporaries of that time. France then gave evidence of her 
solidarity; she began to have confidence in herself. It was the 
year of the Cid, and the year in which Richelieu founded the 
French Academy. It foreshadowed the century of Louis XIV. 

In the meantime, the enemy was on French soil. Richelieu 
had to free Picardy and Burgundy before he could again take 
up his great policy with regard to Germany. Furthermore, it 
was clear that in the face of the forces which the house of 
Austria could control, France could not follow out this policy 
without having an army and a navy. Richelieu worked unceas- 
ingly to give them to her. He was a great statesman, not so 
much by reason of his calculations and his designs as by his 
exact appreciation of the means necessary for arriving at a 
certain end, and of the relation between a state’s internal policy 
and administration, and its foreign policy. This is the secret 
of his success in an enterprise in which France was running 
counter to a power stronger than herself. 

Some difficult but fortunate campaigns, marked by the tak- 
ing of Brisach and of Arras, the success of her Protestant allies 
in Germany, the revolt of the Catalonians and of the Portu- 
guese against the Spanish government—a circumstance from 
which Richelieu knew how to profit—all helped, little by little, 
to establish an equality of forces. The King of Spain with- 
drew into his own country. It was then that Roussillon was 
occupied and the French did not again leave it. Invaded in 
1636, France in 1642 had advanced by great strides towards 
her historic frontiers of the Rhine and the Pyrenees. Nothing 
however had been finished; the war was still going on with 


166 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Germany and with Spain, when, in this year, the Cardinal 
died. Five months later Louis XIII followed him. These two 
men united for reasons of state, one might say by service and 
not by affection, could no longer be separated in history. 

For nearly twenty years, they had demanded of France great 
effort in the way of discipline, organization, and even finances. 
Supported by the king, Richelieu had exercised a veritable dic- 
tatorship which the French people had submitted to with im- 
patience, but without which the national work would have been 
impossible. The nobles were not the only ones who protested. 
More than once the peasants rose up because of the taxes, the 
bourgeois because the interest was not paid. The greatness of 
the result to be attained—France entrenched on the Rhine, the 
conquest of the “natural frontiers,’ the end of the German 
danger, the humbling of the Hapsburgs—were ideas fitted to 
exalt the minds of those shaping French policy. But how could 
the masses be expected to renounce their comforts cheerfully 
for such far-off ends which were beyond their powers of compre- 
hension? Later the policy of Richelieu became a tradition, a 
national dogma, respected even by the revolutionists. But dur- 
ing his lifetime his contemporaries were far from feeling that 
no sacrifice was too great if it meant the defeat of the house of 
Austria. In truth the death of the great Cardinal was felt 
rather as a relief. 

For the safety of France, however, it was necessary to con- 
tinue his policy and she was falling back into the weakness and 
embarrassment of a minority. A king five years old, a Spanish 
regent, an Italian minister—bad conditions, indeed, but offset 
by one important thing. Richelieu left a state policy and for 
carrying it out he left an administration, an organization, an 
army accustomed to war, and experienced generals. Mazarin, 
chosen and trained by Richelieu, understood his methods, and 
had the adaptability to apply them under new circumstances. 
This foreigner, this Italian, greedy for money and profit, so 
prodigiously detested, nevertheless created for France a policy 
which most of the French did not even understand. He had 
the good fortune to find favor in the eyes of Anne of Austria, 


LOUIS XIII AND RICHELIEU 167 


so much so that people believed there had been a secret marriage. 
He inspired her with confidence and in spite of the cabals, in 
spite of a veritable revolution, she never abandoned him. It 
was thus that this troubled regency rounded out the work of 
Richelieu. 

The war was continuing on all the fronts, this war which, 
for Germany, was to last thirty years. In 1643 a crashing vic- 
tory at Rocroy in which the Spanish infantry was defeated by 
Condé, gave France new courage. The empire could do nothing 
more. Spain was growing weaker. The great work of Rich- 
elieu had been to retard his own intervention, to husband his 
forces. France, with her young generals, came to give the final 
stroke at the moment when her adversary was beginning to be 
exhausted. 

There had been talk of peace in Richeliew’s time. The year 
after Rocroy negotiations began. The place chosen for the con- 
ference was Miinster in Westphalia. But the time was not ripe. 
Four more years passed before it was signed, while the war 
still went on. The parties to the treaty were negotiating while 
the battles were raging, and Mazarin understood that in order 
to obtain any definite results, he must conduct hostilities with 
new energy. The campaigns of Turenne in Germany, a de- 
cisive victory by the great Condé at Lens over the united forces 
of Spain and the emperor, finally decided the latter to treat. 
Lhe peace of Westphalia was signed in October, 1648. 

This peace which was to define the boundaries in Europe 
for a century and a half, crowned the work of Richelieu. It 
was the triumph of that method which consisted in rounding 
out the territory of France by assuring her the peaceful pos- 
session of her new acquisition. It was not sufficient merely to 
add Alsace to the realm. It was necessary to provide against 
its being seized again at the first possible date by the Germans. 
It was not sufficient merely to humiliate the house of Austria, 
to impose upon her a peace favorable to France. It was neces- 
sary, in order that that treaty should be respected, in order 
that the results of a struggle which had lasted for more than 
a century should not again be put in question, that the empire 


168 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


should be permanently weakened and that it should not be 
able to reunite in “one single body.” In the treaty of West- 
phalia the policy of the “Germanic liberties,” which had always 
been supported by the French monarchy, received its consecra- 
tion. The victory of France was that of German particularism, 
of the independent German states; the defeat of the emperor 
was the defeat of the idea of a united Germany. Instead of 
being a single state, Germany was a mosaic of principalities, 
republics, and free towns. She was, therefore, weak and offered 
a free field for French diplomacy because her three hundred 
and forty-three independent states of all sizes and sorts, were 
masters of their own movements and of their alliances. Their 
relations with the empire were becoming extremely vague, and 
were represented by a Diet, a veritable parliament, where, with 
a little skill, the French agents could intervene in such a way 
as to keep the “Germanic body” divided. The principle of 
European equilibrium, founded by the treaty of Westphalia, 
rested on the actual elimination of Germany and this remained 
the policy of France, a policy which naturally was to her great- 
est interest, up to the end of the eighteenth century. Finally, 
in order to protect these results, France, as well as Sweden, 
had a right of guaranty, in the name of which she could oppose 
any change in the constitution of the empire, or any redistri- 
bution of its territories; in other words, she could oppose the 
ambitions of Austria or of any other power which proposed to 
again take up the domination of the Germanic countries. As 
Frederick IT said later, “Germany was no longer anything but 
a republic of princes,” a vast anarchy under the protectorate of 
France. Ruined, depopulated by the Thirty Years’ War, re- 
duced to political impotence, she ceased for a long time to be a 
menace to France. Although the French would still have to 
busy themselves with Germany, they no longer had to fear her 
invasions. The grandeur of France dates from this security. 

It is rare that we can fix the date when a certain policy has 
succeeded in obtaining what it was seeking. The signing of 
the treaty of Westphalia represents one of those moments. It 
did not end everything, because in history nothing is ever 


LOUIS XIII AND RICHELIEU 169 


ended, because all progress, in order to be preserved, demands 
a further effort. It did not end everything because the King 
of Spain did not consider himself beaten and continued the 
war. He had reasons to believe that the triumph of Mazarin 
was not final. In France the treaty of Miinster had excited 
neither enthusiasm nor gratitude. It passed almost unnoticed. 
At the moment that it was signed, France had been in a state 
of revolution for three months and the French government 
was hardly in control of Paris. 


CHAPTER XII 
THE LESSON OF THE FRONDE 


We have become accustomed to thinking of the Fronde as a 
romantic and even gallant episode, because of the fine ladies who 
took part in it. It was in reality the revolutionary growth 
of the seventeenth century. This “great century” became one 
of order only after passing through disorder. A moral fever 
and eruption seemed to spread through many of the countries 
of Europe. We have already seen the King of Spain at grips 
with movements for independence in Catalonia and Portugal. 
At Naples a fisherman, Masaniello, seized the power and his 
act was to stir the imagination of others. At Paris, in the 
streets, the people cried out to Anne of Austria as she passed, 
“To Naples!” But nothing could compare with the impression 
created by the revolution in England. The execution of Charles” 
I, brother-in-law of Louis XIII, seemed to foretell the end of 
monarchies. That there was some relationship between all these 
events and the troubles which broke out in France, cannot be 
doubted. 

We find in the Fronde all the elements of which revolutions 
are usually composed. The exertion and fatigue of the Thirty 
Years’ War played a great part in it. Richelieu had demanded 
much of the country and all that he had held down under his 
iron hand, Mazarin was unable to restrain. An alliance was 
formed between the nobles whom Richelieu had subjected to 
discipline and the bourgeoisie who had suffered financial loss. 
Another element, and that by no means the least, which entered 
into the war of interests, was Jansenism, that Reformation 
without schism which has been called “The religious Fronde.” 
The pamphlets against Mazarin and the polemics with the 


Jesuits, the “Mazarinades” and Pascal’s Provincial Letters, 
170 


THE LESSON OF THE FRONDE ivgt 


(although slightly later) spring from the same attitude of mind. 
One admirer of the Fronde has called it “the war of the hon- 
orable against the dishonorable crowd.” If it had succeeded, 
historians would certainly have recognized in it the intellectual 
and moral characteristics of a real revolution. 

When trouble broke out, in the beginning of 1648, the year 
of the treaty of Westphalia, the government had for several 
months been in conflict with parliament which declared cer- 
tain new taxes illegal. The reason for the discontent was the 
usual one. War, foreign undertakings, the annexation of terri- 
tory—all this cost heavily. The treasury was empty. It was 
necessary to borrow, to impose taxes, sometimes even “to hold 
back a quarter” of the rentes, a thing which the bourgeoisie bore 
with little grace, as one might suspect even without Boileau’s 
satire. Mazarin, deep in important European affairs, left the 
finances and fiscal arrangements to his superintendent. When 
things went wrong, he flattered himself that he could arrange 
them by finesse. He made a great mistake, when parliament 
first remonstrated with the government, not to see that some- 
thing far more serious was involved than the intrigues of the 
“Importants,” or princes of the queen’s party, whom he had 
overcome in the beginning of the regency. The resistance of 
parliament was part of a political movement. The people were 
asking for reforms; they were talking of liberty. Especially 
they resented the administration left by Richelieu, the in- 
tendants whom he had created and who were increasing the 
strength of the central authority. The high magistrates re- 
ceived encouragement on every side. The concessions by which 
Mazarin thought to conciliate them were therefore useless. 
Parliament became bolder and although it had only the name 
of the Commons, as in London, the example of the English 
revolution fired their imaginations. In short, the parliament 
of Paris, sustained for the most part by those of the provinces, 
pretended to act as a sovereign assembly, and in the name of 
the ancient institutions and liberties of the realm, to limit the 
authority of the monarchy which had become so strongly re- 
enforced under Richelieu. From that moment, parliaments be- 


172 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


came much more like what they were to be in the eighteenth 
century: a center of resistance to the government and of opposi- 
tion to reform, a center at once of agitation and of reaction, an 
obstacle to the progress of the state. 

The government finally perceived the danger. It wished to 
end the matter and to profit by the impression which the victory 
of Lens had created. The arrest of some of the councilors was 
ordered, among them Broussel,; who had become popular be- 
cause of his violent opposition to the taxes. This was the signal 
for an insurrection and barricades. The government yielded 
before this uprising of Paris. Broussel, “the father of the 
people,” was liberated. The abolition or reduction of the 
taxes was accorded as well as certain other reforms, especially 
the guaranties of individual liberty, which parliament de- 
manded. The governing authority had capitulated before this 
attempt at a revolution. 

The queen, Anne, took the matter so seriously that she no 
longer felt herself safe at Paris and took the young king to 
Rueil. She returned only after the signing of peace, believing 
that this great national success would change the temper of the 
people. But the treaty of Westphalia, so important for the 
future and for history, made hardly any impression at the time. 
As the war with Spain continued, Mazarin, who was becoming 
the object of public hatred, was accused of aiding it. The 
opposition became stronger than ever. The campaign of 
pamphlets and songs against the cardinal and the regent be- 
came more and more venomous. For a second time, the govern- 
ment thought it prudent to leave Paris, this time for Saint- 
Germain, but at night and secretly, so tense was the situation. 
Parliament replied to this flight by demanding the dismissal 
of Mazarin and the city put itself in readiness for defense. 
This was the initial act of the first Fronde. — 

It was the signal for general disorder. Every class was in- 
volved: great lords and beautiful ladies, even generals, and the 
clergy with Gondi (the Cardinal de Retz), parliament, the 
bourgeoisie and the people. Mixed with all there were memo- 
ries of the League, of the Protestant hatreds (which explain 


THE LESSON OF THE FRONDE RES 


the case of Turenne), impatience with the discipline which 
Richelieu had imposed. Everything adds to the flame when 
there are numerous causes of discontent and the people feel 
that authority is no longer strong. In the meantime, this con- 
fusion of so many interests and so many different classes seems 
to have been one of the causes of the weakness of the Fronde. 
At its first encounter with the regular troops, the army raised 
by the Parisians suffered defeat near Charenton. Discord 
broke out among the members of the Fronde and they ended by 
concluding a peace, or rather a truce, with the court. It would 
require too much space to describe in detail the intrigues and 
troubles which filled the rest of the year 1649 and the years 
which followed. This period can only be compared with that 
of the League. The disorder extended to the provinces; Nor- 
mandy and Bordeaux were at one moment in open revolt. In 
the meantime, the French were still at war with Spain and 
neither Condé nor Turenne, eager for glory, hesitated to march 
with the enemy who advanced as far as the Marne. Spain 
must have been weak indeed not to have reaped greater benefits 
from these advantages. 

In the midst of this great disorder, suffering was extreme. 
The moneyed class, those who lived on their incomes, had begun 
the Fronde; they were to be the first to regret it. One is sur- 
prised at but one thing and that is that in all this confusion, 
France should not have gone to pieces. The thing that saved 
the monarchy was the lack of singleness of purpose among the 
rebels. As was usual in times of calamity, an assembly of the 
nobles called for a meeting of the States General. Invoking 
the ancient feudal traditions, which we saw brought to life again 
under the League, they pretended that they were restoring to 
the nobles a right of control over the government. This lan- 
guage, although accompanied by lberalistic formulas, disturbed 
parliament who reserved this rôle for itself and remembered the 
States of 1614, the affair of the paulette, the tax paid for per- 
mission to dispose of one’s office, and the hatred of the military 
party against the magistracy. The germ of the defeat of the 
new Fronde lay in this conflict. 


174 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


The new Fronde, however, was much more serious than the 
old. Mazarin and Anne, unable to do anything by force, tried 
to divide their adversaries, and obtained the arrest of Condé 
and the princes of his family, through promises to the clan of 
Gondi. This maneuver succeeded and, Turenne and the Span- 
iards having been defeated at Rethel, Mazarin wished to profit 
by these circumstances to bring back the court to Paris and to 
reëstablish his authority. This was enough to make all the 
factions of the Fronde unite against him. The Duke d'Orléans, 
President Molé, Gondi, the members of parliament and the 
nobles—everybody—rose up against Mazarin. In the end, par- 
liament demanded not only the liberation of the princes but 
the banishment of the minister. Mazarin did not wait to be 
arrested, but fled from Paris and took refuge with an ally of 
France, the Elector of Cologne, after having agreed with the 
regent to advise her from a distance while awaiting the oppor- 
tunity to return. 

The situation was truly revolutionary. The queen, Anne, 
having wished in her turn to leave Paris, was prevented from 
doing so by the Fronde. The bourgeois militia was called and 
she appeased them only by showing them the young king who 
was sleeping—or pretending to sleep. He never forgot these 
humiliating scenes. In fact, the royal family were prisoners 
while Beaufort, Gondi, and the ‘Grande Mademoiselle,’ 
niece of Louis XIII, all the agitators, the upstarts and the 
doctrinaires of this strange revolution were masters of Paris. 
Fortunately, this society group, allied with that of the streets, 
was not long in disrupting. Before taking flight, Mazarin 
had opened the gates of Condé’s prison with the idea that this 
proud man would not long find himself in agreement with the 
rest of the Fronde. Mazarin was right; Monsieur le Prince 
displeased everybody. His alliance with Spain became a scan- 
dal, and parliament, who denounced Mazarin because he was 
a foreigner, ordered that Condé should be pursued as a rebel 
and a traitor who had delivered strongholds into the hands of 
the enemy. This situation, which he had calculated on, seemed 
to the Cardinal, propititious for his reéntry into France; in- 


THE LESSON OF THE FRONDE 175 


stantly the parties reunited against him and as the young king, 
whose majority had in the meantime been proclaimed, was 
away in pursuit of Condé, the Fronde reigned supreme in 
Paris. When the royal army, commanded by Turenne who had 
again become submissive (in those days men passed with facil- 
ity from one camp to another) wished to reénter the capital, it 
was stopped at the gate Saint-Antoine and it was there that 
Mademoiselle, from the top of the Bastille, turned the cannon 
on the troops of the king. 

This was in 1652 and for the state it was the most critical 
moment of the Fronde. The king was stopped before Paris, 
and had the revolted provinces at his back. A government 
was being formed of demagogues, together with the princes and 
the princesses of the blood; it was a return to the worst days 
of the League. But common sense, through the organization 
of a third party, was also returning. It did not take the Pa- 
risian bourgeoisie long to perceive that disorder was not aiding 
business. A riot accompanied by fire and slaughter at the 
Hôtel de Ville frightened some and began to disgust others. 
After three months of this turmoil, Paris, having become wiser, 
was ready for the return of the young king. Mazarin himself 
returned in February of the following year. 

All France was bruised and torn by this stupid adventure. 
From a civil war, aggravated by foreign conflicts, which had 
lasted for four years, there resulted what a contemporary 
called “the general ruin of a people.” History has described 
the “misery of the time of the Fronde.” There was such dire 
distress that the missions of Saint Vincent de Paul journeyed 
everywhere throughout the country bearing aid to the sick and 
food to the starving. Furthermore, as after the League, it 
took the country a long time to recover from the effects of the 
shock. Insubordination did not disappear overnight. It was 
necessary to negotiate and repress, to pay some and punish 
others. Some provinces were delivered over to anarchy, ex- 
ploited and tyrannized over by brigands with feudal pretensions. 
This was the case in Auvergne where, ten years later, it was 
still necessary to hold “great days,” where the harsh procedure 


176 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


of the government acted as a warning to other malcontents. 
We are tempted to wonder how the French state was able to 
resist this shock, unless we remember that the army in general 
remained true to its duty and that everything would have been 
lost save for a “few unknown officers of the old regiments” of 
whom M. Lavisse speaks as those “whose firm fidelity saved the 
king of France.” 

Sainte-Beuve has written regarding another troubled period 
in French history: “We are apt to imagine our ancestors as 
living in the infancy of the doctrines with which we are fa- 
‘miliar and as having had no experience of the things which we 
ourselves have seen; but they saw many of them themselves 
and were present at many others that we have forgotten.” The 
Fronde afforded one of these lessons; a lesson for the nation and 
a lesson for the king who always remembered in the days of 
his power and glory the evil times through which the monarchy 
had passed during his youth. 

Even with the Fronde vanquished and Mazarin back in 
Paris, order was not restored as by magic. France longed for 
it but under what form of government could she realize it? 
It was hard to tell. One fact became clear in the midst of 
all the agitations, all the campaigns of pamphlets and press, 
and all the bold speeches of parliament—the opposition to 
Mazarin was born of the opposition to Richelieu and was all 
the more violent because the government was weaker and the 
second cardinal was a foreigner. For thirty years and more, 
for the trouble dated back to Concini, the government of France 
had been that of a ministry; a government by a minister in 
the name of the king. The régime had been good for France 
since under two men of the first rank it had given her fron- 
tiers, security, and prestige in Europe. However, the French 
did not take kindly to it. It displeased and irritated them. 
And since it had not been supported and had caused such vio- 
lent seditions, it was dangerous and to be avoided in the future. 
Although France had said plainly what she did not want, she 
still did not voice her real desires. The word republic, pro- 
nounced occasionally during the Fronde, remained without an 


THE LESSON OF THE FRONDE Lie 


echo. Since France was exhausted by anarchy, since she feared 
another eclipse like that at the time of the League, since she 
wished a government that would govern and which should not 
be that of a kind of grand vizier, there remained but one solu- 
tion—the personal government of the king. Hence, out of the 
Fronde came the reign of Louis XIV. 

From 1653 to 1661 this idea was ripening. Louis XIV was 
growing up, he was thinking and forming his policy. It was. 
a transition, a preparation for what was to follow. Calm 
was returning and authority was reéstablishing itself and this 
authority was to be that of the king. Legend has admirably 
preserved the need of this time and the change which took place. 
Louis XIV did not actually enter parliament whip in hand nor 
did he utter the words, “I am the State.” This, however, was 
the significance of his warning to the magistrates, demoralized 
by their disobedience, when having learned that they were re- 
fusing to register the edicts presented by him that day, he re- 
turned in haste from the chase and addressed them in no 
uncertain terms. But the words “I am the State” expressed 
rather a situation that was in process of becoming. It was not 
as yet an accomplished fact when the king was still but seven- 
teen years old and Mazarin had to pacify the parliament always 
jealous of its own importance and angry at this affront. 

The astonishing thing is, that in spite of her great weakness, 
France should have been able to continue her policy and bring 
to an end her war with Spain. It is true that tit for tat, 
Mazarin had supported the revolution of Portugal just as the 
Spaniards had aided the Fronde. Furthermore, the treaty of 
Westphalia favored France. There was no further anxiety 
about Germany. If Mazarin had not been able to prevent the 
election of Leopold of the Hapsburg family, after the death of 
Ferdinand, he formed an alliance with some dozen of the 
German princes, known by the name of the Rhine League, 
which was powerful enough to paralyze the empire. Finally, 
Mazarin sought the friendship of Cromwell, although France 
had given asylum to the Stuarts. After the execution of Charles 
I, uncle of Louis XIV, neither the French nor the Spanish 


178 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


monarchy severed diplomatic relations because both of them 
desired the support of England. Such was the general in- 
difference to ideals and forms of government that even re- 
publican Holland, for the sake of her maritime interests, entered 
into conflict with republican England. In the struggle between 
France and Spain, England, as in the preceding century, was 
the arbitrator. Cromwell took the side of France because he 
desired to ruin the Spanish sea power, and inaugurate a co- 
lonial policy. Colonial rivalries were beginning to exercise an 
influence in European politics. 

The aid of the English, although very weak from a military 
point of view, turned the balance in favor of the French. The 
war with Spain, that war of more than twenty years, which 
was languishing, suddenly came to life, especially in Flanders. 
Turenne found himself face to face with Condé who was still 
in the Spanish camp, and defeated him in the dunes near 
Dunkirk. This was the end. The treaty of the Pyrenees was 
signed between France and Spain in 1659; and this peace, in 
so far as the difference in the situations permitted, was drawn 
up on the model of that of Westphalia. The French acquisi- 
tions were important: Roussillon and Cerdagne, a part of Artois, 
some strongholds in Flanders, Hainaut and Luxemburg. But 
in this policy of moderate progression which was the true Cape- 
tian tradition revived by Richelieu, the growth of security was 
equally important with the acquisition of territory. It was 
ever a question of hindering the union of Austria and Spain. 
In maneuvering for Louis XIV to marry the eldest of the 
infantas, Mazarin prevented the marriage of Maria Theresa 
with the Emperor Leopold, a marriage which would have 
brought back the old peril of Charles V. Leopold married an- 
other daughter of Philip IV, but he was no more than coheir 
to Spain with the King of France. Moreover, by a clause of 
the contract, Maria Theresa did not abandon her rights to the 
succession to the throne of Spain except in return for a “dot” 
or dowry, which was never to be paid. The pretensions of 
France in Flanders, which for the most part she had had to 


THE LESSON OF THE FRONDE 179 


renounce, therefore remained possible and she would be able, 
if the occasion presented itself—and it was to do so—to oppose 
the transfer to Austria of the Spanish succession. Thus eleven 
years after the treaty of Westphalia, that of the Pyrenees left 
France without any formidable enemy on the continent and 
through the elimination of the two dangers, Germany and 
Spain, she became what she had never been before, the first 
of the European powers. 

It is as vain to deny the part Mazarin had in this success as 
to calculate it exactly. He continued Richelieu’s policy under 
difficult conditions and this Sicilian was more conscientiously 
French than Turenne or Condé. The world has not forgiven 
him for loving money and for having filled his own pockets. 
He paid himself for the services which he rendered. We admit 
it was not delicate. In another way, however, some more honest 
but less adroit ministers have cost the country dearer. 

In 1661 when Mazarin died and the king really entered into 
his majority, all things, both within and without, were favorable 
for a great reign. However, affairs in France were still far 
from perfect. As the preamble of an ordinance of the time 
said, disorder was “so universal and deep-seated that a remedy 
seemed almost impossible.” In this disorder, although the 
feudal power was becoming weaker, the power of money was 
growing stronger. The financiers, farmers of the public rey- 
enues, skillful in attracting men of letters to their side and 
through them controlling public opinion, had become a disturb- 
ing element in the state. The trial of Fouquet was to be the 
act through which Louis XIV, at the beginning of his reign, 
was to establish his authority. For the king it was a question 
of governing in his own person, as the nation, which was tired 
of ministers, demanded. In foreign affairs, it was a question 
of preserving the progress already made—a thing as difficult as 
had been its attainment in the first place. In the end and in 
general, Louis was to prove himself equal to these tasks. And 
to explain his work, his policy, his temperament, his character, 
one word suffices and that is the word of the sagacious Sainte- 


180 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Beuve: “Louis XIV had only good sense, but he had a great 
deal of it.” That is why the classic school, the school of reason 
which was developing at the moment when he became master, 
found its expression in him. One might say that in all domains 
the lesson of the Fronde was bearing fruit. 


CHAPTER XIII 
LOUIS XIV 


Tue long reign of Louis XIV, of more than half a century, 
which really began only at the death of Mazarin, has one domi- 
nant characteristic: there was complete tranquillity within the 
realm. From that time on until 1789, that is, for one hundred 
and thirty years, four generations, there was to be an end of 
those troubles, those seditions, those civil wars whose incessant 
return had wrought such desolation. This prolonged calm and 
the absence of invasions bear. witness to what a high degree of 
civilization and of wealth France had attained. Order within, 
and security without; these are the ideal conditions of pros- 
perity. France rewarded him whom she called the “Great 
Monarch” by a sort of admiration which lasted for a long time 
after his death. Voltaire, in his Century of Louis XIV, is in 
the same state of mind as the contemporaries of the years which 
followed 1660. He underlines as the fact which most impressed 
him and which really was the most impressive: ‘All was peace- 
ful during his reign.” The glory of Louis XIV was to illumine 
Louis XV. And it was not until still later, until after fifteen 
years of the reign of Louis XVI that the charm was broken and 
France entered a new cycle of revolutions. 

Under Louis XIV, the king both reigned and governed. 
The monarchy had authority. That was what the French de- 
sired. Since they wished neither Leagues, nor Frondes, nor 
all-powerful ministers, the personal government of the king 
was the only solution. As soon as the idea of the new sovereign 
was understood, it became popular and was acclaimed. Hence 
the concert of praises that literature has passed on to us, that 
enthusiasm which sometimes astonishes us but which we are 


wrong in interpreting as flattery. As under Henry IV, France 
181 


182 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


expanded happily under this reaction. In every way, in all 
domains, she loved and exalted order and that which assured 
it—authority. From the comic poet, Molière, to the bishop, 
Bossuet, there was but one voice. It was thus that in the 
second part of the seventeenth century, monarchy came to have 
a prestige to which it had never before attained. 

The originality of Louis XIV was that he thought out his 
situation and understood, as no one else did, the circumstances 
under which his reign had begun, which in France gave him 
unlimited credit. He has expressed it in his Memoirs for the 
instruction of the dauphin, in the words of a man who had 
seen much—the Fronde, the English, and the Dutch revolu- 
tions. There are periods when “extraordinary events’ make 
the people realize the value of authority. “So long as every- 
thing prospers in a state, they may forget the great benefits that 
royalty bestows and envy only those which it possesses; man, 
naturally ambitious and proud, never understands in his own 
heart why another should govern him until his own need makes 
him feel it. But of this need even, as soon as he has a constant 
and regulated remedy, custom renders him unconscious.” Thus 
Louis foresaw that the movement which made the monarchy 
more powerful than it had ever before been, would not last 
forever, that the time would come when the need of liberty 
would be the stronger. Approved in 1661 for its benefits, 
authority would appear in 1789 as tyranny. By the end of his 
reign, Louis could see that France was growing weary of that 
which she herself had demanded and even hailed with enthusi- 
asm and gratitude. He foresaw this fatigue, foretold the re- 
turn swing of the pendulum and, in so far, was a better judge 
of men than those who assert that he gave monarchy its 
death-blow by concentrating the power in the hands of the 
king. 

This reign of fifty-four years, so full of external events, 
counted within but two events of note: the condemnation of 
Fouquet and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. These 
two events were in perfect accord with the general sentiment 
and approved and even demanded by public opinion. 


LOUIS XIV 183 


If there was one man more than another who seemed fitted 
to succeed Mazarin, it was the superintendent, Fouquet, richer 
and almost as powerful as the king himself. Fouquet had built 
up an immense fortune at the expense of the public finances, 
following the example of the Cardinal who at least had as an 
excuse for his thefts, the services which he rendered the nation. 
Louis XIV, immediately upon the death of Mazarin, took upon 
himself the direction of affairs of state, working with his min- 
isters but delegating his authority to none. He feared the 
superintendent who had great financial means at his disposal, 
a numerous clientéle, a crowd of protégés and friends every- 
where within and without the administration and in the world 
of letters and society. Furthermore, Fouquet, following a habit 
which dated back to the time of the civil wars, had acquired at 
Belle-Isle a refuge and stronghold where he could, in case of 
disgrace and misfortune, defy the government. It was this 
dangerous person, aspiring to the rank of prime minister, whom 
Louis wished to overthrow. His fall would be a sign that there 
would henceforth be no mayor of the palace, no grand vizier, 
and that no one would be allowed to enrich himself at the 
expense of disorders and the state treasury. The dissimulation 
and guile with which Louis proceeded before arresting the 
superintendent show that he feared him, and was not sure of 
success. Fouquet was broken more easily than was foreseen, 
and his fall was acclaimed by France as the fall of the power 
of money in the government. The example became famous and 
was salutary. From that time forward, Louis met with no 
opposition. 

Twenty-five years later, the same motives—the fear of a 
great independent power within the state—led him and even 
drove him, to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This 
affair cannot be separated from the other religious agitations 
of the time. What became, little by little, the persecution of the 
Protestants was closely allied with the conflicts with the papacy 
—conflicts which ended in the famous Declaration of Rights 
of the Gallican Church in 1682. By this the king took over 
the right to appoint bishops of the Church of France. The 


184 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Revocation took place in 1685. People were haunted by the 
memory of the Wars of Religion. Remembering the League, 
the authority of the Pope in matters outside of religion seemed 
to them a danger. Jansenism which had played a minor rôle 
in the Fronde was looked upon with disfavor. For the same 
reason, the dissent of the Protestants who, however, were living 
in peace, awoke constant apprehensions. It is an error to 
believe that the need of moral unity which led to the revocation 
was in essence only religious. It was first of all political. In 
this respect, England and the Protestant countries of the north, 
by suppressing the remains of Catholicism, by persecuting 
Catholics and depriving them of the right to hold public office, 
had set the example. The English had not forgotten the im- 
pression made by the Gunpowder Plot and regarded all papists 
as traitors and public enemies. For the French, still mindful 
of the “‘state within the state” and the siege of La Rochelle, 
Protestantism represented the possibility of a return of civil 
war and revolution. It is very remarkable that Bossuet should 
have carried on openly his controversies with the ministers of 
the reformed religion and the defense of the liberties of the 
Gallican church and that the quarrels of Louis XIV with In- 
nocent XI should have coincided with the measures against the 
Protestants. 

It was by the method of conversion that the government first 
attempted to bring back the Protestants. There were some 
famous converts, Turenne among others, which gave the impres- | 
sion that the zeal of the Protestants was dying and that heresy, 
having become “old-fashioned,” was voluntarily disappearing, 
as Madame de Maintenon said, she herself having been con- 
verted. However, the resistance of the Reformed Church, espe- 
cially in the thickly settled districts of the south, irritated those 
who were directing the conversions. Little by little, rougher 
methods were resorted to. The Protestants replied by emi- 
grating. Others, in the Dauphiné and the Cévennes, old strong- 
holds of the Reformation, took up arms. All France then saw 
red, and thought that there was to be a return to the desolations 
of the previous century and to plotting with the enemy, all 


LOUIS XIV 185 


the more as France was then on the eve of the struggle with the 
League of Augsburg. She wished to compel by force what she 
had been unable to obtain by persuasion. This was the whole 
story of the revocation and the government was led to extremi- 
ties that it had not foreseen and into embarrassments which 
Louis himself admitted when he declared that, if he had sup- 
pressed the liberty of worship for political reasons, he intended 
to respect liberty of conscience. Emigration deprived France 
of a great number of her most industrious citizens (the statis- 
tics vary from 150,000 to 400,000) and the government, which 
was soon forced to bring back the refugees, was more sensible 
of this loss than the public who would willingly have cried 
‘good riddance.” By a curious turn of events, these émigrés, 
welcomed in Protestant countries, especially in Prussia, helped 
to spread the French language and arts as well as a feeling of 
bitterness against their country which the enemies of France 
were not slow to exploit. It was only later that in France her- 
self Louis XIV was blamed. 

The condemnation of Fouquet and the Revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes were the only internal affairs of importance 
in this reign. Nothing, therefore, disturbed the work of or- 
ganization which Louis undertook with his ministers. He ad- 
hered to the rule which he had set for himself, never to delegate 
power to any one of them no matter how great they might be. 
Colbert, the disciple of Richelieu, trained by Mazarin and 
recommended by him to the king, had the duties of several of 
the most important ministries: those of finance, the navy, com- 
merce, agriculture, public works, and the colonies. However, 
he never had the title or the function of prime minister any 
more than Louvois, the reorganizer of the army. 

The Duke de Saint-Simon complains of this reign as that 
of the vile bourgeoisie. Under Louis XV, d’Argenson will 
say with the same disdain: “Satrapy of plebeians.” 

The direct collaborators of Louis XIV did in fact come from 
the middle classes, a matter in which this reign is not distin- 
guished from other Capetian reigns. It is only that in the 
generation of 1660, a zeal, an enthusiasm, an ardor for work, 


186 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


a taste for all that is ordered and great, is found in administra- 
tion as in literature. The idea was plain to all. France had 
a firm and stable government. She occupied the first place in 
Europe since neither a divided Germany, nor a conquered 
Spain, nor an England weakened by revolutions was longer 
menacing her. However, France was not yet complete. She 
still needed Lille, Strasbourg, and Besancon, for example. It 
was the moment for rounding out her frontiers, for realizing 
her old aspirations. For this it was necessary that she should 
be strong in her own right and not merely through the weak- 
ness of others, a weakness which would not last for ever and 
which coalitions would remedy. It was, therefore, necessary 
to give the country means which it did not have and to restore 
to it what had been swallowed up in the disorders of the Fronde 
—her finances, her wealth, industry, a navy and army—all 
that had fallen into a state of disrepair. A few years of work 
and method sufficed to provide ships, regiments, resources of all 
sorts, even money, without which, as Colbert said, a state is not 
truly strong. The moment to pass to external action had 
arrived. 

To understand intelligently the complex events which are to 
follow, we must imagine for ourselves Europe as she was at that 
time. The power which, until then, all the world had feared 
was Spain. Holland, who had freed herself from Spanish 
domination, looked with anxiety upon her presence in the rest 
of the Low Countries. As this proximity was equally painful 
to France, a Franco-Dutch alliance was easily and naturally 
formed. On the other hand, England and Holland, both mari- 
time and commercial nations, were competing with each other 
and with Spain for the great colonial power of that period. As 
long as France had neither navy nor commerce, her relations 
with England and Holland were friendly and untroubled. But 
all this changed when, under the influence of Colbert, France 
became a commercial competitor and when the war of tariffs 
began. A still greater change took place and animosity arose 
when the Dutch, seeing the French army on its march to con- 
quer Spanish Flanders, perceived that they would have as neigh- 


LOUIS XIV 187 


bor the powerful French state which had now become for them 
much more formidable than a far-off Spain. 

The completion of France, the realization of the great na- 
tional design, so often compromised, so often hindered and 
pushed aside, and finally resumed by Richelieu, required, in 
order to succeed and not cost too dearly, that England should 
at least remain neutral. This was a difficult matter; it was 
neither in her tradition nor to her interests to see the French 
advancing in Flanders on the Ostend and Antwerp side, while 
the French flag was becoming more powerful on the sea. Two 
favorable circumstances permitted France to keep England for 
several years where she wanted her. First, the English-Dutch 
rivalry and finally the restoration of the Stuarts which had been 
accomplished by the aid of France. France controlled Charles 
II, whose throne was weak, by the aid which she gave him and 
by his fear of the remaining followers of Cromwell whom Louis 
XIV, in keeping with the frankness of the time, boasts of hav- 
ing supported at the same time that he was aiding the other fac- 
tion, namely that of the king, which wished to lead England 
back to Catholicism. The French situation was good and suc- 
cesses were easy as long as this combination held, as long as 
England, weakened by her internal struggles, was subject to 
French interests and misunderstood her own. Difficulties began 
the day when England and Holland united and William of 
Orange, having overturned the Dutch Republic, was also to 
overturn the Stuarts, take the throne of his father-in-law, 
James II, and become king of England in 1689. After this 
revolution, the fortune of Louis XIV was to change. England 
was to. become his principal enemy, the soul of the coalitions 
which were to oppose the development of France by sea and 
on the continent. It is easy to understand why Louis XIV 
should have become interested in the cause of the Stuarts when 
his mother and Mazarin had been indifferent to the death 
of Charles I. Louis’ one desire, therefore, was to neutralize 
England’s. power. This policy, which succeeded for twenty- 
five years, permitted him to follow up the work of Richelieu, 
ta efface the more serious effects of the marriage of Maximilian, 


188 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


and Mary of Burgundy, and to give to France the territories 
and the protection which she sorely needed on the north and east. 
After that, Louis’ task was to defend his conquests. One might 
say that his reign had two distinct parts, that there were two 
sides to the shield: before and after the fall of James II. 

These brief explanations permit us more easily to follow the 
course of events from the time of the wars which had the acqui- 
sition of Flanders as their object up to the time of the question 
of the Spanish succession, which occupied the end of the reign. 
If we accuse Louis XIV of ambition, of love of conquest, then 
we must accuse the first Capetians of ambition because they 
wished to advance beyond Dreux and Etampes. As the essen- 
tial object was to protect France against invasion, to give her 
a firm frontier, it was as reasonable to have Mons, Namur, and 
Maéstricht as the strongholds of the Scheldt and the Sambre, 
Valenciennes or Maubeuge, which protect the valley of the Oise. 
What are called conquests of Louis started from a strategic 
plan for national security. They were in harmony with the 
system of Vauban and were, so to speak, dictated by him. We 
are no longer astonished that countries of the Flemish tongue 
should be incorporated in France. It is thus that she has kept 
Hazebrouck and Cassel. It was a question, said Auguste 
Longnon, of “closing the entire Low Country comprised between 
the sea and the Lys.” The invasion of 1914, the battles of 
Charleroi and of the Yser make the reasons for this clearer. 
The real conqueror, then, was Vauban, who pointed out the 
places and the lines where France could be most easily defended. 
It was by a method of trial and error, after resistance con- 
quered or recognized as insurmountable, that the French fron- 
tiers on the north and the northeast were fixed where they are 
to-day. 

By the time of the death of the Spanish king, the reforms 
of Colbert had borne their fruit; the finances of France were 
on a sound basis and she had an army—the two necessary 
foundations of her policy. The moment had come to think of 
external action and the pretext was ready at hand: the dowry 
of Maria Theresa had never been paid. The renunciation con- 


LOUIS XIV 189 


ditional upon its payment was therefore nul and void and Louis 
XIV demanded the inheritance of his father-in-law. All this 
proceeding had been planned in advance. From the military as 
well as the diplomatic point of view, the affair had long been in 
preparation since, although the King of Spain died in 1665, 
Turenne did not begin the campaign until two years later. 
It was conducted, moreover, with such extreme prudence that 
the outer world marveled at the “lack of boldness” of the 
French. In the meantime, Spain was incapable of defending 
her provinces which were so far removed. 

In 1667, the French army entered Flanders as it had 
planned, and the following year proceeded into Franche- 
Comté, all with such precaution that one would have thought 
that Spain was still formidable. We must admit that this 
moderation, planned so as not to arouse either England or Hol- 
land, served no purpose and is perhaps what in the end left 
Louis less considerate of European opinion. Turenne had not 
even dared to proceed as far as Brussels. In the meantime, 
because the French had taken some Flemish strongholds, the 
Dutch, allies of the French up to this time, thought themselves 
lost and stirred up Europe against the King of France whom 
they accused of aspiring to a “universal monarchy.” French 
diplomacy, skillfully conducted by Hugh de Lionne, proceeded 
with caution. The new king of Spain, Charles IT, was weakly. 
It was probable that he would leave no children and that the 
inheritance would be claimed by the husbands of his two sis- 
ters; one had married a Bourbon, the other a Hapsburg. If 
the Emperor Leopold was not for the moment a dangerous com- 
petitor, he might become so; thus the question of the Spanish 
succession was already absorbing. A treaty providing for the 
eventual division of the kingdom was signed with Leopold in 
order to forestall these future difficulties and to reassure France 
on the subject of the Spanish possessions. These were crowding 
in upon her, and shutting her out from her natural frontiers, 
a stretch of country much more extended than the modest con- 
quests of the recent campaign. 

Informed of this transaction, Holland made Louis an offer 


190 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


on the basis of his conquests. To accept this and to keep the 
friendship of Holland, Louis would have had to abandon the 
treaty of partition and tie his own hands for the future and 
France would have had to renounce the idea of rounding out 
her frontiers. The wise Lionne himself advised him not to sign 
such a contract, which would destroy the transaction concluded 
with the emperor and which would have profited only the house 
of Austria. Holland, as though she had only waited for this 
pretext, then became reconciled with England and even at- 
tempted to draw Sweden, France’s old ally, into a coalition 
against her. 

In the midst of these events, the French army had taken pos- 
session of Franche-Comté almost without striking a blow. Louis 
XIV did not wish to go too fast and, greatly to the discontent of 
his generals, preferred to risk nothing. The opposition which 
he had encountered in Europe, this attempt at a triple alliance 
of Holland, England and Sweden, which he had not expected, 
made him cautious. He hastened in 1668 to sign the treaty 
of Aix-la-Chapelle with Spain, to whom he restored Franche- 
Comté, keeping only what he had taken in Flanders. Lille and 
Douai were not unimportant acquisitions. Vauban immediately 
fortified these new strongholds, thus giving them their signifi- 
cance as bulwarks against invasion on France’s most vulnerable 
side. 

Historians have claimed that in 1668 France could, with one 
blow, have extended her conquests as far as Antwerp, thus 
crushing the future Belgium in the egg. Louis XIV reasoned 
better than they. He knew that England had given up Calais 
against her will and barely tolerated the French occupation of 
Dunkirk. The taking of Antwerp would certainly have meant 
war; and French policy demanded that England should remain 
neutral if France was to carry out Vauban’s plan for national 
security. The French of this period were not dreamers, their 
imagination was practical. They cared less for enlarging their 
country than for protecting it. Lille seemed to them an espe- 
cially good protection. In every town taken, Vauban dug 
ditches, constructed screen fortifications and half-moons and 


LOUIS XIV 191 


these works of his have always been of service to France when- 
ever she has been attacked. It is easy to understand that Louis 
XIV should have listened half-heartedly to Leibnitz who coun- 
seled him to leave his paltry towns on the Meuse and the Scheldt 
to conquer Egypt and India. Historians have even written dis- 
dainfully of the policy of Louis as commonplace. They mean 
to imply that in spite of the ample style of the century and the 
majestic manner in which he talked of his glory, his policy was 
that of the bumpkin who preferred good soup to fine language. 

The first great political and military operation which Louis 
XIV undertook had in it the germ of the rest. The result of 
this first experience was his conviction that, in order to secure 
France on the north, he must settle with the Dutch. To do 
this, it was first necessary to dissolve their alliances. Negotia- 
tions were again taken up with Charles IT of England. France 
outbid Holland for Swedish support; a great number of the 
German princes were won over by subsidies and the French had 
a strong ally in the Elector of Cologne. In this way, it was 
possible in 1672 for a powerful French army to invade Holland. 
This campaign whose beginning augured an easy conquest be- 
eame in reality a war which lasted six years. 

It might perhaps have been ended in a few weeks if, through 
an excess of prudence, the French had not arrived too late at 
Muyden where the principal dikes were. The Dutch inundated 
the country to save themselves and to put Amsterdam out of 
reach. They did more; they overturned the bourgeois republic 
which was partially friendly to France, in order to give the 
stadtholderate, in other words the monarchy, to William of 
Orange, the inveterate enemy of the French. The course of 
events was entirely changed by the resistance of this little na- 
tion which passed from a republican to a monarchical und mili- 
tary régime. France was held in check. William of Orange 
bestirred himself everywhere to raise up enemies against her. 
He incited Protestant England against Charles II; he allied 
himself with the Elector of Brandenburg—the Prussia of to- 
morrow—with the emperor, even with Spain, with every one 
who had a grievance against France and who would willingly 


192 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


have destroyed the treaties of Westphalia and of the Pyrenees. 
Thus was formed a first coalition, weak and tottering, to be sure, 
which France combated victoriously and without much difficulty. 
The abstention of England relieved France of danger by sea and 
on the continent it was a simple matter to set Sweden and Po- 
land against Brandenburg, the Hungarians against the emperor, 
and to encourage insurrections against the King of Spain. Some 
of the German states, like Bavaria, moreover, remained faithful 
to France and others became her allies either through fear of 
the Hapsburgs or for a money consideration. 

It is nevertheless true that the situation was completely re- 
versed. France was now forced to the defensive. At one mo- 
ment Alsace, which the emperor dreamed of reclaiming, was 
invaded and it was there that Turenne was killed. But France 
was strong on land and on sea and she was rich. Her army 
progressed slowly but surely in Flanders which remained her 
main objective. Her navy, the work of Colbert, became war 
proficient and the illustrious Ruyter was defeated by Duquesne. 
In spite of the obstinacy of the stadtholder, the Dutch were 
growing tired of the war, they were becoming fearful and the 
friends of France in the republican party were asking for peace. 
Louis XIV also was ready to stop. He was keeping his eye on 
England, which was getting beyond his control ; Charles II yield- 
ing little by little to public opinion had just given his niece, 
Mary, in marriage to William of Orange. Finally peace was 
signed at Nimwegen in 1678 and Louis was able to impose his 
own conditions; conditions which were always inspired by the 
same principle of the acquisition of the territory necessary to 
safeguard the frontiers of France. Those strongholds which 
were too far advanced, such as Ghent, Charleroi, and Courtrai 
were returned to Spain. But he kept Valenciennes, Cambrai, 
Saint-Omer and Maubeuge, that is, half of Flanders, besides 
Franche-Comté which protected France on the east. She thus 
assumed her modern aspect and dimensions. Other stipulations 
of the treaty imposed upon the emperor, prepared for the an- 
nexation of the duchy of Lorraine. Still others, placing the 
left bank of the Rhine under the control of France, protected 


LOUIS XIV 193 


her from invasion on this very vulnerable side. All this was in 
conformity with a system of foresight and prudence to which 
posterity has rendered scant justice. 

Her frontiers, that iron belt around France, were at the same 
time enlarged and strengthened and this result was attained, 
thanks to the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees which 
had freed France from the pressure of Germany and Spain; 
thanks also, and one cannot insist too strongly on this point, to 
circumstances encouraged and exploited by French diplomacy 
which kept England out of the struggle. If England had turned 
against France a little sooner, it is not certain that the under- 
taking in Flanders would have succeeded any better than the 
one under the Valois. But we are approaching the moment 
when England was to assert herself and oppose the French 
policy and was, through her leadership, to make the coalitions 
of the future formidable. France was about to enter upon a 
period of difficulty and danger, a new Hundred Years’ War, as 
it were, which, like the other, was not to be continuous but was 
to end only in the nineteenth century at Waterloo. 

There was in the meantime, however, a respite, during which 
the French state, having dictated her conditions at Nimwegen, 
seemed to be at the height of her power. Louis XIV profited 
by this to fill up certain gaps, to suppress the annoying and 
dangerous enclaves which existed in the midst of the new pos- 
sessions. The method adopted was to proclaim them incorpo- 
rated in the realm, by means of “arrêts de justice,” judicial de- 
crees, founded upon the interpretation of the existing treaties 
and supported at need by military force. It was thus that Louis 
proceeded in Franche-Comté and in Alsace and Lorraine. It 
was thus that in 1681 Strasbourg became French in government 
before she became so at heart. 

These annexations, in time of peace, by a method very 
economical for France, and which were very justly called “re- 
unions,” caused much discontent in Europe. They disturbed 
Germany. But neither the emperor, menaced by the Turks un- 
der the very walls of Vienna, nor the peaceful Dutch bourgeoisie 
who had returned to their business, were in any condition or 


194 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


humor to undertake a war to oppose France. England was still 
neutral; French diplomacy kept the German princes from in- 
terfering and by the truce of Ratisbon the “reunions” were pro- 
visionally accepted by Europe. It was a success but a pre- 
carious one. The danger of a coalition had appeared and it was 
discovered that Europe would not submit to the undue ag- 
grandizement of France and that, at the first opportunity, she 
would exert her power to force her back within her old limits. 
In this situation, diplomatic means were not neglected but they 
were of little avail. Lotis XIV judged that the only way to 
do was to take a bold stand, because “if he should cease to in- 
spire fear, all the powers would unite against him.” This ex- 
plains his action in several events which followed, as, for ex- 
ample, when he bombarded Genoa who had supplied Spain with 
ships. It is easy to criticize from a distance; at the moment 
it is not easy to decide which is the wiser course. Some say 
that Louis XIV provoked the coalition. Are we sure that he 
would not have encouraged it by giving an impression of fear 
and weakness? There was already a secret understanding be- 
tween William of Orange and the Emperor Leopold. The rey- 
ocation of the Edict of Nantes, coming just at this time, fed 
the propaganda against France in the Protestant countries. 
But the Protestants were not her only enemies. The emperor 
undertook to stir up the Catholic countries by accusing Louis 
of having allied himself with the Turks. The king even had a 
serious conflict with the Pope, Innocent XI. Avignon was 
seized and the Marquis of Lavardin having entered Rome with 
his soldiers, came very near imitating the experience of Nogaret, 
who had made Boniface VIII prisoner. In this respect there is 
a strange resemblance between this reign and that of Philip the 
Fair. 

It was to combat the growing power of France that the League 
of Augsburg was formed (1686). At first, it was far from in- 
cluding all Germany or all Europe, but it was soon to be ex- 
tended. The most serious event, however, was now about to 
take place; England was to join the enemies of France. The 
opposition to James IT was growing and seven members of the 


LOUIS XIV 195 


House of Lords took it upon themselves to offer the throne to 
William of Orange. When Louis offered to back James, he was 
disagreeably surprised to find himself repulsed by this Stuart 
who, through fear of being definitely compromised by this al- 
liance, deprived himself of his only help. No longer able to 
count on James II, Louis decided to follow a laissez faire policy 
with the idea that the usurpation of William of Orange would 
bring a long civil war in its train and that it would disorganize 
both England and Holland. This calculation proved false. 
The Prince of Orange landed in England and dethroned his 
father-in-law without difficulty (1688). From that time forth, 
England was hostile to France and firmly united with Holland. 
The political situation in Europe was completely changed. 
Louis, who had a presentiment of these events, did not wish 
to wait for them. Having assumed the attitude of a bold front, 
his plan was to use intimidation and precaution. Without de- 
claring war, he announced that he was compelled to occupy the 
left bank of the Rhine and a part of the right bank, in order 
that the empire should not be able to use it as a military base 
against France. By devastating the Palatinate on the other side 
of the Rhine, Louvois was but brutally following the logic of 
Louis’ conception of defense; in order to give himself a surer 
protection he put a desert between the empire and France. 
Louis criticized this violence which was contrary to the French 
policy of friendliness towards the Germanic populations. As a 
matter of fact, throughout the war which lasted from 1689 to 
1697, this glacis was impassable in spite of the number of her 
enemies and the importance of the forces which attacked France. 
Furthermore, these preparations in the Rhine country were ac- 
companied by extensive operations on other parts of the fron- 
tier. The policy of Louis XIV remained true to its main idea 
—to surround France with fortresses and trenches, to close up 
all gaps and bar all routes of invasion. That is why the king 
wished at the beginning of the campaign to seize Mons and 
Namur which protected the valley of the Oise. Unable to break 
down this impregnable system from the front, the enemy hoped 
to proceed through Switzerland. But the treaty of friendship 


196 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


concluded with the Swiss cantons protected France on that side 
as well. 

With the League of Augsburg compromising the empire, 
England, Holland, Savoy, and Spain, France had nearly all of 
Europe against her. The object of the coalition was to stop 
the expansion of France and drive her back to her old limits 
fixed by the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees. After 
this, these treaties themselves would have been assailed. In 
spite of eight years of campaigning in which both sides avoided 
any great decisive battles, the coalition (often disunited although 
William of Orange was its head) did not obtain the result it 
hoped for. Everywhere, on land, France successfully held her 
own. There was no fighting on French soil and she had been 
victorious at Steenkerke, Neerwinden, Staffarda and at 
Marsaglia. | 

The war would have ended entirely to the advantage of the 
French if they had been successful on the sea. However, the 
beginning of the naval campaign had been brilliant. The power- 
ful fleet which Colbert had left did not fear the combined forces 
of the Dutch and the English. They landed freely in Ireland 
to support James II and even thought of landing in England. 
But the difficulty for France was to keep her supremacy both 
on the ocean and in the Mediterranean. At Paris there were 
two parties—one that believed in the importance of strength on 
the sea, and the other that believed only in continental suprem- 
acy. After the disaster of La Hogue, the “continentals” carried 
the day over the maritime party. This naval defeat was ir- 
remediable. It ruined the hope of reducing England by men- 
acing her in her own territory, although the fleet was not de- 
stroyed. But confidence was lost. The public ceased to take 
interest in naval exploits. The expense which was entailed in 
maintaining a powerful navy served as a pretext. Colbert was 
dead, his work was not followed up and decadence set in. For 
a long time to come the French were to have no naval force 
capable of opposing the English who thus became masters of 
the sea. 

The defeat of the French fleet in 1692 was far from ending 


LOUIS XIV 197 


the war. It only deprived France of a complete victory. Tour- 
ville and Jean-Bart still dealt the English and Dutch admirals 
some hard blows. On land the coalition was weakening, but 
France, too, was growing weary. She had not been invaded 
either on the Rhine or on the side of the Alps or the Pyrenees, 
but she had suffered. Her immense effort had been costly. The 
resources created by Colbert had been consumed and Louis XIV 
saw with anxiety that the hour was approaching when the ques- 
tion of the Spanish Succession would again create a dangerous 
situation. He had sought for a long time to arrange a peace 
by compromise, which should be at once advantageous and hon- 
orable. This peace, the terms of which were moderate and 
carefully thought out, was that of Ryswick (1697). Although 
‘ France restored much that she had taken, she kept Strasbourg. 
These restitutions were inspired principally by her desire to 
follow out her plan of keeping her frontiers strong. Vauban’s 
plan had victoriously withstood the proof of war; but he was 
somewhat inclined to overextend his system. Louis thought 
that nothing would be lost by withdrawing a little. He has, 
none the less, been criticized for not having made better use of 
the victories of his generals, Luxemburg and Catinat. The 
military party complained bitterly of this peace, and Louis to 
whose name we to-day attach the ideas of excess and pride 
passed in his own day as having sacrificed, through timidity, 
the interests and the grandeur of France. 

What cost Louis more than anything was recognizing William 
of Orange as King of England and renouncing the cause of the 
Stuarts. It meant that England was no longer under French 
influence. But a question of greater importance was now to 
demand great diplomacy on all sides. The event foreseen since 
the beginning of the reign, since the marriage with Maria 
Theresa, was approaching. The King of Spain, Charles IT, 
brother-in-law of Louis XIV and of the Emperor Leopold, 
would die without children. According as Charles IT left his 
succession to one or the other of his nephews, the fate of Europe 
would be changed. The danger for France was that the inheri- 
tance might revert to the Hapsburgs of Vienna, an event which 


198 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


would have reconstituted the old empire of Charles V. But 
Charles II could not decide. Innumerable intrigues were 
started concerning his will. Louis XIV also thought, and 
rightly, that even if a Bourbon were chosen, he could not enter 
into his great inheritance without trouble and even war. This 
inheritance would include Spain, Belgian Flanders, a great 
part of Italy, Mexico, and almost all of South America. He 
realized now that in all his projects for the future he would have 
to reckon with the maritime powers. Moreover, it was evident 
that England coveted the colonies of Spain. Louis, therefore, 
preferred to negotiate a treaty of partition in regard to the 
Spanish succession and for nearly three years the map of 
Europe was made and remade in order to give satisfaction to 
all the competitors, Hapsburgs and Bourbons, Bavaria and 
Savoy. The plans of Louis were, as usual, founded upon the 
basis of the French frontiers and it was in Lorraine, in the 
Alps, and at Nice that he sought his compensations for abandon- 
ing the Spanish inheritance. 

The first attempt at partition was rendered void by the death 
of the Elector of Bavaria. In order to arouse no anxiety on the 
part of any of the powers, Spain had been attributed to him. 
Now all had to be done over again. William of Orange did not 
enter wholeheartedly into any of these negotiations because a 
peaceful solution would take away England’s hope of enriching 
herself through the spoils of Spain overseas. The Emperor 
Leopold who was working to turn the will in favor of his own 
family was slow in giving his consent and there were also the 
Spaniards themselves to be considered who did not wish their 
state to be dismembered. A decision was finally forced upon 
the vacillating Charles IT who was unwilling to consider the 
possibility of his own death, by the Spanish patriots who desig- 
nated the second grandson of Louis XIV, the Duke of Anjou 
as the heir. To them a prince of the powerful house of Bourbon 
seemed more likely than any other to maintain the independence 
and integrity of Spain. 

Few deliberations were more serious than those in which 
Louis XIV, with his council, weighed the reasons for and 


LOUIS XIV 199 


against accepting the testament of Charles II who died in 1700. 
To accept was to run the risk of a war with the emperor at 
least, and very probably with England, whose government was 
only waiting for a pretext in order then to seize the colonial 
part of the Spanish inheritance. No matter what precautions 
were taken war was, therefore, inevitable. On the other hand, 
to hold to the treaty of partition was to open the way for the 
emperor to claim the whole inheritance because partition was 
excluded by the will. Thus, according to the saying of Chancel- 
lor Pontchartrain, whom Saint-Simon quotes, “It was within the 
choice of the king to allow the house of Austria to branch out 
a second time into something far less powerful than it had been 
ever since the time of Philip IT. This was the capital considera- 
tion and decided Louis to accept the will of Charles. One of 
the ministers present at the conference was, however, of the 
opinion that France would gain little by installing a Bourbon 
in Madrid, “whose next generation at the latest, having become 
Spanish by interest, would show itself as jealous of the power 
of France as the Austrian kings of Spain had done.” Indeed 
it is true that the Duke of Anjou very quickly became Spanish at 
heart. But the great point gained was not only that there 
would be a dynasty of French origin at Madrid. It was that 
there would no longer be a bond between Spain and the Ger- 
manic Empire and that France would no longer be taken from 
behind. 

The famous diplomatic boast, “There are no longer any 
Pyrenees,” expressed this great result—the end of an anxiety 
and a danger which had long weighed upon France. In what 
followed, France had reason to congratulate herself on having 
removed Spain from German influence. 

From the moment that a grandson of Louis XIV succeeded 
Charles II, under the name of Philip V, it was inevitable that 
there should be violent opposition in Europe. That of the dis- 
appointed emperor was immediate. As for William of Orange, 
he had already made his decision, but he had to reckon with 
the English parliament and with the Dutch States General, 
both equally weary of war. It might perhaps have been pos- 


200 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


sible for Louis to avoid a conflict. He has been criticized for 
having given William III the pretext that he was seeking to 
excite public opinion in England and the Low Countries. 
From the nature of the situation, Louis knew there would be 
hostility and the measures of precaution which he took were 
immediately interpreted as provocations. With his grandson 
as King of Spain, he had free access to Antwerp and Ostend 
and this was just what England would not stand. Neither 
would she suffer that, through his association with Spain, Louis 
should dominate the Mediterranean and perhaps make of 
France the first of the colonial and maritime powers. The 
House of Commons did not hesitate after it once understood, 
according to the expression of one historian, that it was to be a 
“commercial war,” the stake of which was to be the commerce 
of the rich Spanish colonies. As in all the great wars, economic 
considerations were combined with politics. 

William IIT died before he could declare war, but it was none 
the less inevitable. The situation was stronger than the men 
who thought they were controlling it. It may occur to some 
that Louis could have reassured the anxious powers by declaring 
definitively that France and Spain would not be consolidated. 
But the emperor had already taken up arms to reclaim what he 
called his rightful inheritance and Spain was so weak, so incap- 
able of defending herself (without considering the internal un- 
rest attendant upon a change of dynasty) that France was 
forced to support her by putting her generals, her armies, and 
her resources at the disposal of Philip V. Under these condi- 
tions, it was easy for the enemies of France to pretend that the 
French and Spanish states were now one and the same, and the 
accusations of imperialism redoubled. 

Louis XIV, foreseeing that the struggle would be difficult, 
fortified himself by alliances with the Electors of Bavaria and 
Cologne, with the Duke of Savoy, and with Portugal. The 
tactics of the coalition were to win away these allies or to render 
them powerless. The Duke of Savoy, an adept at changing his 
policies to his own advantage, deserted first. The English im- 
posed upon Portugal the treaty of Lord Methuen by which that 


LOUIS XIV 201 


country was, for the future, to become one of their protectorates. 
They further profited by these circumstances to install them- 
selves at Gibraltar where they have since remained, and at Port- 
Mahon. England served her own cause and assured her mastery 
of the sea while pretending to fight for the liberty of Europe. 
Furthermore both on sea and land she conducted the war with 
more and more vigor, kept the coalition together in spite of 
difficulty, was lavish with subsidies to the emperor, and recog- 
nized as King of Spain, the Archduke Charles whom her fleet 
landed in Catalonia. Marlborough and Prince Eugene were 
formidable enemies, the French generals were less efficient and 
less fortunate; the French navy, neglected since the battle of 
La Hogue, was reduced to pirate warfare. After the defeat of 
the Franco-Bavarian army at Hôchstädt, Bavaria was forced to 
submit, and Germany was lost for the French. Milan and Bel- 
gian Flanders were next reduced. In 1706 after four years of 
war, the French armies were driven back upon their own fron- 
tiers, which had to be defended, at the same time that France 
was forced to help Spain which was being invaded. It was an 
enormous effort which drained her strength and she barely suc- 
ceeded in keeping the enemy on the frontiers prepared by Vau- 
ban. Matters were becoming worse and worse; Frances own 
territory was being invaded and the taking of Lille was felt to 
be a terrible calamity. At the end of the year 1708, the Coali- 
tion believed that France was doomed. Louis XIV had at- 
tempted, early in the crisis, to open negotiations fearing that 
the results attained in the first part of his reign might be com- 
promised. This was, at bottom, what the Coalition wanted. 
To each of his offers they replied by heavier demands. The 
emperor at first had demanded Strasbourg and then all of 
Alsace. Louis would have gone so far as to abandon Philip V; 
the powers wished him to go further and promise to take up 
arms against his grandson and oblige him to leave Spain to the 
Archduke Charles. Even at this price, France would have 
obtained only a suspension of hostilities for two months, “a 
miserable and uncertain truce.” 

It was evident that the intention was to ruin and dismember 


202 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the country. France had to fight to the end, no matter how 
great the need and desire for peace. To carry on the war, she 
had to explain to her people that her enemies were forcing her 
to continue. Louis XIV was advised to call the States General, 
but he did not wish to resort to this dangerous expedient. He 
preferred to write a letter—to-day we would call it a message— 
which was read throughout the realm and the French responded 
with a new enthusiasm. The faculty of rising to an emergency, 
which is a national characteristic, was shown at this moment. 
Recriminations and people crying for reforms, to whom the re- 
verses gave an opportunity to complain of the régime, were of 
course not lacking. _ 

Louis’ resistance was not in vain, for the enemies of France 
were in their turn growing weary. In fact, except in the north, 
France was not invaded and, on her lines of defense, was giving 
way only foot by foot. The day of Malplaquet in 1709, that 
dreadful year, was again unfortunate for France, but it was 
terribly costly for the enemies. Negotiations were reopened 
with a stronger desire on the part of the English to end the 
struggle. They were weary of supporting a continental war by 
subsidies first to one ally and then to another. The Tories, the 
conservative party, came into power and were less favorable to 
France than the Whigs or liberals had been. They thought that 
the time had come for England to consolidate her colonial and 
maritime advantages which the war had brought her. Further- 
more, an unforeseen event had occurred in Europe; through the 
unexpected death of the Emperor Joseph, the Archduke Charles 
had inherited the Austrian crown. By continuing the war at 
her own expense to give him Spain, England would have been 
working to establish the empire of Charles V, which was no 
longer a metaphor but a reality. Were not the conditions which 
Louis was willing to accept, namely, the separation of the two 
monarchies, France and Spain, preferable? It appeared in the 
end that Louis XIV, by accepting the succession, had saved 
Europe from danger and had fought for that European balance 
of power whose doctrine, although less clear to the English than 
to the French, was better understood by the Tory party. The 


LOUIS XIV 203 


debate over these new ideas was brought to a head in London by 
a rising in Spain in favor of Philip V and by the Franco- 
Spanish victory at Villaviciosa. From then on, the negotiations 
advanced and a Franco-English armistice was concluded in 
1711. The Dutch and the imperialists remained hostile, but 
deprived of their chief support. For France the peace was 
opportune. The stronghold of Landrecies was giving way and 
the last lines of the “artificial frontier,”” which had enabled her 
to stem the tide of invasion, were yielding in their turn. The 
Dutch and the imperialists were calling their gains, the “way 
to Paris.” Villars succeeded in stopping the enemies and de- 
feating them at Denain. Then, taking the offensive, he 
delivered the places in the north which had already fallen 
into their hands. The treaty of Utrecht (1713) was signed 
soon after. 

Shorn of useless detail and of praise, as superfluous as blame, 
the history of Louis XIV comes down to this: the treaties of 
Westphalia and the Pyrenees having proved so profitable for 
France, all one part of Europe had leagued together to destroy 
these results. At the end of this long struggle, a sort of balance 
was reëstablished. France had lost on the sea. On the conti- 
nent, she had kept the frontiers, slightly extended at some 
points, (she kept Landau, for example, which she has to-day), 
except the duchy of Lorraine which was not then united with 
the realm, although under its control. But she was driven out 
of Belgian Flanders. In that particular case the will of Eng- 
land prevailed. The principal clause of the treaty of Utrecht 
was that which took Belgium away from Spain in order to give 
it to the emperor under the guise of a compensation. There was 
no more to be a French Belgium than a Spanish Belgium under 
a prince of French origin; this had been the deepest motive of 
England’s opposition to Philip V. If the house of Austria 
received the Low Countries it was only on condition that it 
could never dispose of them to any one; and by any one was 
meant France. Holland having become through William of 
Orange simply an annex of England, was charged with the duty 
of watching over the execution of this essential clause and had 


204 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the right to keep a garrison in a certain number of Belgium 
strongholds. The treaty, called that of the “Barrier” (the bar- 
rier was against France), constituted an Austro-Dutch condo- 
minium quite similar to the neutrality under which Belgium 
exists in our own day. In demanding that the port of Dunkirk 
should be destroyed and its fortifications razed, England 
showed the importance she attached to disarming France on 
the side facing her and to keeping her separated from Ant- 
werp. The question of Belgian Flanders so long contested 
between France and England is one of the keys to French 
history. 

This was not all that England obtained. She had her share 
of the succession of Charles II of Spain. Mistress of the 
seas, she was to be that of the colonies also. In North America 
where France had had a foothold from the time of Henry IV, 
some of the lands inhabited by the French, such as Newfound- 
land and Acadia, were lost and Canada threatened. In South 
America the trade privilege taken from Spain was given to 
England to whom the maritime and colonial supremacy re- 
verted. Even Holland herself, a mere “skiff in England’s 
wake,’ no longer counted. 

In comparison with these, the other conditions of the treaty 
of Utrecht and those which completed it are only secondary. 
The formal separation of the crowns of France and of Spain 
and Philip V’s renunciation of his rights as a French prince 
go without saying. Other conditions of the treaty were to have 
great consequences which did not at first appear. In order to 
obtain a lasting peace through a sort of balance, an attempt 
which the European congresses begin over again at least once 
every hundred years, they proceeded to numerous exchanges of 
territory. The physiognomy of Europe was transformed by 
them. 

The emperor, in compensation for the loss of the crown of 
Spain, received, besides the Low Countries, the important con- 
cessions of Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Kingdom of Naples. 
Through these acquisitions, the center of gravity of Austria 
was suddenly moved towards Italy and the east, and removed 


LOUIS XIV 205 


from the “Germanic body.” The possessions of the emperor 
were from that time widely separated and difficult to defend. 
Weakened by this extension and powerless in Germany, the 
house of Austria ceased to be a danger for France. She be- 
came a conservative power in Europe like France herself, who 
had no desire to put again in question the results so painfully 
acquired. However, two states had emerged, two states with 
their futures to make. The Elector of Brandenburg had become 
king in Prussia and it was destined that the Hohenzollerns, the 
most active and the most ambitious of the German princes, 
should try to dominate Germany and build up for their own 
profit the German unity which the Hapsburgs had failed to 
compass. The Duke of Savoy was also given the title of king 
and his position was the same with regard to the future unity 
of Italy. It was a great change in the system of European 
forces. Louis XIV, nearing the end of his life, comprehended 
that the struggle against Austria had become an anachronism. 
In keeping with the true spirit of French policy, and the treaty 
of Westphalia, the duty of France for the future would be to 
keep watch of that state, whichever it might be, that would be 
capable of reducing the “liberties of the Germanic states,” and 
to an experienced eye that state was Prussia. Such was the 
political testament of Louis XIV, who had recognized the new 
king at Berlin only after long resistance. But France was not 
to listen to Louis. It was his true glory to have understood that 
the rivalry between the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons was at an 
end, that it was becoming an anachronism; and that continental 
upheavals would only injure France and profit England, to 
whom each European conflict would afford an opportunity to 
strengthen her maritime supremacy and enlarge her colonial 
empire. Austria had ceased to be dangerous; Prussia had not 
yet become so; while England, victorious on the sea, threatened 
to stifle France. To maintain her position on the continent, 
France had had to yield on that side and it was also on the sea 
that after many errors and unfortunate diversions she was one 
day to attempt to reéstablish herself. The thing that this long 
war had taught her was that she could not contend victoriously 


206 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


with the English if her naval forces were not in condition to 
combat theirs. 

France was exhausted when Louis XIV died in 1715. Once 
more she had paid dearly for the acquisition of her frontiers 
and her security. There were many, even among the French, 
who felt that she had paid too dearly. The suffering had been 
great. France had just managed to get through the year 1709 
with its terrible winter and famine. There was much complaint 
and the people were singing almost revolutionary songs against 
the king and his family. Some of the women of Paris even set 
out to march upon Versailles to demand bread. The troops had 
to be called to stop them. 

There were also some honest people and some “fine quixotic 
spirits’ who were offering plans for reform. The death of the 
young Duke of Burgundy broke up a small group who had been 
inspired by Fénelon, Saint-Simon, and Boulainvilliers. They 
were forming plans for the return of an imaginary past, a kind 
of political romance which comes to partial expression in T'élé- 
maque. Contrary to the trend of French history they dreamed 
of a delightful harmony between a patriarchal royalty and a 
periodic States General where the nobility should again play 
its great rôle. This “neo-feudal” movement or “aristocratic 
reaction” is not negligible because it will reappear under the 
Regency, will tend to fuse with the theory of “checks and bal- 
ances” of Montesquieu and will perpetuate itself in the royal 
family up to the time of Louis XVI who will have been brought 
up on these ideas. 

At the same time, Vauban was recommending the “dime 
royale,” that is a tax of 10 per cent upon all incomes without 
exemption for any one. His system of a single tax, so often 
revived since his time, was childish, but at that time it was the 
form only that was condemned. As early as 1695 Louis XIV 
had created the head tax which affected every one except the 
king and the very small taxpayers, but it encountered vast oppo- 
sition, so contrary was it to the general customs and interests. 
In 1710, the “tax of the tenth,’ which greatly resembled Vau- 
ban’s “dime royale,’ was instituted. Every one that could, 


LOUIS XIV 207 


bought himself off from this tax either by installments or all at 
once—by contract or by a “free gift” —so great was the horror 
of regular taxes. This had already been the origin of many 
of the fiscal privileges; for it would be an error to suppose that 
the privileged classes under the old régime had been only the 
nobles and the clergy. These, moreover, had had certain obliga- 
tions to fulfill in return for their immunity: the clergy, those 
of public assistance and of defraying the expenses of the church; 
the nobles of rendering military service. Among the “privi- 
légiés” or those who were exempt, were also certain bourgeois 
who had acquired public office, and the inhabitants of certain 
. free towns or provinces; the latter were generally those lately 
acquired, which had their own charter, their States and their 
liberties and which the government thought best to handle care- 
fully. Of these rights and privileges the parliaments, acting as 
the “intermediary body,” were the recognized defenders. When, 
after Louis XIV, the “sovereign courts” awoke from their long 
sleep, their resistance to the taxes was furious. From this 
situation, there will come under Louis XV those struggles be- 
tween the government and the magistrates; the one attempting to 
restore the finances and the others opposing the taxes of the 
“tenths” and “twentieths.” The ideals in which Fénelon had 
educated the Duke of Burgundy were opposed to those of Vau- 
ban. It is important just here to note this essential contradic- 
tion in order to understand the character of the internal difh- 
culties which will exist in France throughout the eighteenth 
century. 

There were still other reasons that led Louis XIV, at the 
end of his reign, to believe that the disorders which had made 
the beginning of it so uncertain might possibly return. In his 
opinion, what was to be feared was another Fronde. A minor- 
ity would come after him. His son and his grandson were dead. 
The heir was “a child of five years who may encounter many ob- 
stacles,”’ said the king on his deathbed. He also said, “I am 
going away, but the state will last forever.” 

If Louis XIV did not found the state, he left it signally 
stronger. He had disciplined its turbulent elements. The 


208 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


nobles no longer thought of new Leagues or new Frondes. For 
fifty years, the parliaments had neither repelled the edicts nor 
opposed the ministry or the government. There was but one 
authority in France. Contemporaries recognized perfectly that 
the strength of the French nation, which had enabled it to 
resist the assaults of Europe, sprang from this fact, while the 
King of England had had to reckon with the House of Com- 
mons, and the emperor with the Diet of Ratisbon and with the 
independence of the German princes guaranteed by the treaty 
of Westphalia. 

All had not gone as well within the realm of France as Col- 
bert had dreamed, whose vast projects of organization had been 
realized only in part because the great external tasks had pre- 
vented. At least, France had political harmony, without which 
she could not have resisted such powerful coalitions or settled so 
advantageously the questions of Germany and Spain. It has 
been said that Louis XIV left only the appearance of harmony, 
because, three-quarters of a century after his death, revolution 
broke out. The astonishing thing is that after the fifty-four 
years of calm of his reign, it should have lasted for sixty-five 
years longer. Modern history does not present so long a period 
of tranquillity. It was thus that France could pass through a 
minority and a regency which justified only in part the anx- 
iety of the old king who lay dying. 

We have so far passed over the domain of literature and 
anecdote which belongs to this century. Nevertheless, Louis 
XIV had his legend, inseparable from his history and that of 
France. Versailles, the court, the mistresses of the king, the 
appealing La Valliére, the haughty Montespan, the austere 
Maintenon who became his legitimate companion, are still an 
inexhaustible source for romance, the theatre, and for conversa- 
tion. Turn by turn, if not both at once, the French have ad- 
mired or blamed this royal life begun in success and glory, énded 
in family sorrows and reverses. They have not yet grown tired 
of repeating the details of it, divided between the respect 
and the envy which great names and great fortunes always in- 
spire. Curiosity concerning this great reign has not been ex- 


LOUIS XIV 209 


hausted even in our own day, so much does France owe to the 
century of Louis XIV, and so greatly has the imagination been 
impressed by this roi-soleil, this sun king. Versailles remains 
an historic monument not only for the French but for all 
Europe. This palace whose costly construction drew so many 
complaints from Colbert, and where Louis enjoyed himself all 
the more because the memories of the Fronde had left him bitter 
against Paris, is a place that millions of men have looked upon 
with admiration and which many have tried to imitate. Ver- 
sailles symbolizes a civilization which for many years had been 
that of Europe, because the French were considerably in advance 
of other countries and France’s political prestige had helped to 
spread her language and her art. Following generations will 
inherit the material and moral capital which was then amassed. 
The Revolution itself will inherit some of its ideas and will 
spread them over another Europe which a man of the eighteenth 
century, a stranger, the Italian Caraccioli, will call “French 
Europe.” 


CHAPTER XIV 
THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 


Ir has been repeatedly said, ever since the eighteenth century, 
that the Regency was “pernicious for the state.” It was, in 
fact, for reasons which had less to do with the character of the 
regent than with the nature of the circumstances. 

The great preoccupation of the monarchy was always to as- 
sure the succession to the throne, and Louis XIV, before his own 
death, had witnessed that of his oldest son, the dauphin, and 
his two grandsons, the Dukes of Burgundy and of Berry, while 
the Duke of Anjou, King of Spain, by accepting a foreign 
throne had lost his rights. The heir was still but an infant who 
for a long time would have no descendants. The first prince of 
the blood, the natural regent, was the Duke of Orléans against 
whom Louis XIV entertained an antipathy because of his in- 
trigues in Spain against Philip V and, above all, because of 
the distrust which the members of this royal family inspired in 
him through the memory of their old seditions. It is worth re- 
marking that Louis XV and Louis XVI, by a regular system, 
shoved the princes aside from all the important offices. 

Louis XIV, indeed, had every reason not to like his nephew 
whose reputation was not good and who passed for a rebel— 
to-day we would say a progressive. Furthermore, the ranks of 
the house of France were much thinned out, and Louis would 
have to look to distant collaterals to fill the regency. Hence 
came the idea which he put into execution in 1714 and 1715 
without any one’s daring to interfere, of reénforcing his own 
family. The two sons whom he had had by Madame de Monte- 
span, the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse, were de- 
clared legitimate and rightful heirs in case of the death of the 


young prince. Parliament dutifully registered the edicts. By 
210 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 211 


his will Louis XIV instituted a Council of Regency of three 
members of which the Duke of Orléans would be only the presi- 
dent, the other two members being his legitimatized sons. 

This was the initial cause of the difficulties and scandals 
which were to follow. The Duke of Orléans worked incessantly 
to oust the Duke of Maine and Count of Toulouse, possible con- 
testants for the throne. That was not all. He was also afraid 
of Philip V who persisted in claiming his rights and who, in 
case the young Louis XV should die, might be able to make 
them prevail. This complicated situation was to weigh heavily 
for several years in all French politics. In wishing to limit the 
authority of the regent, Louis XIV had driven him to exert all 
his force to strengthen it. 

The first care of Philip of Orléans was to set aside Louis 
will and to rid himself of the Council of Regency. He asked 
parliament to render him this service. The chief magistrates 
perceived here the possibility of assuming a political rôle which 
they had lost for over fifty years and which they had not hoped 
to regain. They remembered on this occasion that in the time 
of the League, parliament had saved the monarchy by opposing 
the Spanish candidacy. They adopted the maxim that parlia- 
ment is feeble when the king is strong and strong when the king 
is weak. Flattered, they accorded Philip the powers of a verit- 
able regent and the testament of Louis XIV remained a dead 
letter. In exchange, the right of parliament to remonstrate was 
recognized, and it was not slow to abuse this power which had 
been restored to it. 

This change was not wise, since the government in seeking 
to fortify itself on one side had weakened itself on the other. 
But this was not the only price that the Duke of Orléans paid 
for the regency. He sought popularity because he feared rivals. 
Having friends to reward and partisans to gain, he created seven 
councils consisting of ten members each. These councils cor- 
responded to what had been the different ministries. In other 
words, the secretaries of the state were replaced by small as- 
semblies, according to a system which Saint-Simon recommended 
and which had been promulgated some years before by a group 


212 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


headed by the Duke of Burgundy under the influence of Féne- 
lon. The regent even ordered that Télémaque should be 
printed, to show that he intended to be guided by reformers like 
its author, Fénelon, who had appeared at the end of the last 
reign, and to inaugurate a liberal government of a new kind, a 
strange mixture of feudalism and liberalism, an imitation of 
England and of the old Merovingians. Other measures were 
taken; notably the abolition of the restrictions against the Jan- 
senists whom Louis XIV had never forgiven for having partici- 
pated in the Fronde. It was a policy contrary in every way to 
the policy of the late king, and was easily imposed because 
every one was tired of the austerity with which the court of 
Versailles had ended by surrounding itself. The Regency was 
a reaction against the piety of Louis, the confessors and the 
Jesuits; and the Duke of Orléans, an agreeable and generous 
man withal, became the idol of a great part of the public up to 
the day when exaggeration and injustice began to paint him as 
a monster of debauch.* 

The drawback to the councils, to this government with so 
many heads, was not slow to be felt, and they were suppressed. 
It is none the less true that these changes—these pretended re- 
forms so suddenly annulled, this return of parliament to po- 
litical activity and finally the stroke by which, in 1718, the 
regent, still with the aid of the chief magistrates, took away 
from the legitimatized sons of Louis XIV the right to be called 
princes of the blood, shattered the monarchical system as Louis 
XIV had devised it. 

The confusion in the foreign policy was perhaps even worse. 
The ideas and the testament of Louis XIV were no more re- 
spected than had been his family arrangements. In the face 
of England, which had been rendered very powerful by the 
treaty of Utrecht, France undoubtedly needed to keep peace; 
but she had also to look out for her independence and her fu- 
ture. Spain and Austria, who no longer threatened her, could 


1In this respect impartial historians will recognize that they were very 
near the truth. The reputation that France has received for licentiousness 
springs very largely from the notorious debauchery which characterized 
the life of Philip of Orleans. 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 213 


unite with her in a system of maritime and colonial equilibrium. 
There were still the remains of a Spanish navy and the emperor 
was going to try to create one in the Low Countries, through the 
Ostend Company. These possibilities did not escape the notice 
of England; and in order to destroy them, she put in play what 
means circumstances offered. Her attempt was to frighten the 
regent by a threat of war which she had no intention of carry- 
ing out, and then to guarantee him not only the government but 
the succession, which, in case the young king should disappear, 
would be disputed by Philip V. Duclos affirms that a year be- 
fore the death of Louis XIV, Stair, the English ambassador, 
had held secret conferences with the Duke of Orléans. “He 
persuaded this prince that King George and he had the same in- 
terests. The better to gain his confidence, he admitted that 
George was an usurper with respect to the Stuarts; but he added 
that if the feeble scion of the French royal family should fail, 
all the renunciations of other members of the house would 
not prevent him, the Duke of Orléans, from being considered 
a usurper with regard to the King of Spain. ‘He could not 
therefore, Stair had said, ‘have a surer ally than King 
George.’ ” 

Such was the secret reason for the Anglo-French-Dutch al- 
liance, for the pact by which the regent and his minister, Du- 
bois, bound themselves, eve. delivered themselves, to England. 
The avowed motive, by which historians have allowed themselves 
to be deceived, was to guarantee the peace of Utrecht, which 
had no need of being guaranteed. The regent and Dubois 
abandoned themselves to the English who led them straight into 
war with Spain, at whose side France had just fought against 
England in order to establish a Bourbon on the Spanish throne. 
That Philip V may have been at fault in meddling with French 
affairs and in insisting upon asserting his rights in case of the 
death of Louis XV, is undoubtedly true. But the “conspiracy” 
of his ambassador, Cellamare, with the Duchess of Maine has 
been much exaggerated and this intrigue, rather worldly than 
political, served only as a pretext for the war with Spain 
(1718). The faults of Philip V do not excuse the fact that to 


214 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the sole profit of English politics, the regent destroyed 
France’s natural system of alliances after the War of Succes- 
sion. The pretensions of Philip V were platonic so long as the 
young king lived. It would have been easy to reassure England, 
since she was still alarmed about the reunion of the two crowns 
—or pretending to be alarmed. If the projects of Alberoni, 
minister of the King of Spain, with regard to Sicily were dar- 
ing, they did not constitute a reason for aiding England to de- 
stroy the Spanish navy—a feat which Admiral Byng took upon 
himself. Neither was it a reason for invading Spain with a 
French army and destroying her arsenals and her ships that 
were in process of building, only to assure the naval supremacy 
of England. This war, of advantage to England alone, ended in 
the dismissal of Alberoni who had wished to reanimate the 
corpse of Spain, and in the renunciation by Philip, of his 
claims to Sicily as well as of his rights to the crown of France. 

The useless war with Spain, which has even been called fra- 
tricide, had already stirred public opinion, Philip V had ad- 
dressed a manifesto to the French people, which had not been 
without effect, in which he reminded them that he was the 
grandson of Louis XIV. At this time an event within France 
herself had even more serious consequences; it had its victims 
and its ruins and engendered a lasting discontent. 

Law and his System have become famous. Every one knows 
of them, their history has come down through two centuries 
and we still speak of them as we do of the “assignats.” It is an 
evidence of the profound impression made by this financial 
adventure. To understand how the regent was led to give his 
confidence and protection to the Scotchman, Law, the ingenious 
and bold banker, we must reckon with his desire to please. We 
have already seen that at the death of Louis XIV, the French 
finances, reéstablished by Colbert, had again relapsed into a 
critical state. It is monotonous to reiterate that great foreign 
enterprises, the acquisition or the defense of territory, have, in 
all epochs, consumed enormous capital and left difficult finan- 
cial questions to be solved. To find resources and to reéstablish 
the equilibrium by ordinary means, it was necessary to ask sacri- 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 215 


fices of the taxpayers, to suppress privileges, no matter what 
their origin, to make everybody pay, and pay a great deal, to 
oblige those who had enriched themselves through the war to 
give up a part of their gains, and to reduce the rate of interest 
and the pensions. It was this that the Duke de Noailles honestly 
attempted to do, at the same time taking care to avoid the bank- 
ruptey which certain people, like Saint-Simon, advised. For 
the success of these measures, and these reforms, what was 
needed was what Michelet called “a strong government, firmly 
seated.” That of the regent was not of this sort. He feared 
everything. He had reéstablished in all their ancient power, 
the parliaments which were always hostile to taxes. To submit 
the great lords and persons of influence to the tax of the “tenth” 
might perhaps send them over to the party of Philip V, and the 
Dukes of Maine and Toulouse. To bleed the bourgeoisie, the 
people, was to create irritation and the regent needed popu- 
larity. He was conquered by the System of Law, very seduc- 
tive in appearance, which consisted in creating, with the air of 
demanding nothing from any one, an artificial wealth and fic- 
titious resources, by printing paper money. 

Law’s System still has defenders who assert, without proof, 
that he was ruined by the jealousy of the English, a thing which 
in any case would have, if true, accomplished the ruin of 
Dubois and the policy of complacency towards England. The 
fact is that after a brilliant period, a whipping up of commerce, - 
industry, and colonization (the founding of the port of Lorient 
dates from this time), the collapse came. ‘There had been 
some months of speculating in stocks, the memory of which has 
become legendary, where fortunes had been built in a day. 
Suddenly Law’s scaffolding began to give. It was founded on 
the Company of the Indies, commonly called the Mississippi 
Company, whose shares served to guarantee the notes of Law’s 
Bank, which had become the State Bank. The fall of the shares 
involved that of the notes, and vice versa; the whole system 
caved in. There were sudden ruins, and a vast displacement 
of fortunes, to say nothing of the loss of credit, and of public 
confidence; in short, it was a social smash-up which came just 


216 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


at a time to aggravate the moral unsettling, the first traces of 
which were seen at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. 

This change is plainly shown in the literature of the day. 
After the school of 1660, the school of order and authority, 
came the school of cynicism. It is very significant that the col- 
lapse of Law’s System should have come in 1720 and the 
publication of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, the year follow- 
ing. 

Contemporaries were astonished that a revolution did not 
break out. But a new Fronde was no longer possible. The 
state, as Louis XIV had formed it, was too well regulated, too 
well disciplined, too powerful. It would have been necessary 
to overturn the whole governmental machine, as was actually 
done towards the end of the century; but for the present no one 
was ready to go so far. The prestige of the monarchy, which 
had been raised to such a height, prevented it then and was 
to prevent it again later. There was every hope for the reign 
of Louis XV. 

The king was fourteen years old, the age of legal majority, 
when Dubois, and then the regent, died within a few months 
of each other, in 1723. In the space of eight years, through 
the misfortune of their situation and the force of events rather 
than through evil intentions, they had committed some fatal 
errors. Above all they had lost sight of the situation of France 
in a transformed and complicated Europe where new elements 
were appearing and were tending to change the relation of 
forces. There was not only Prussia, but, with Peter the Great, 
Russia as well to be considered. The advance that France had 
made in the seventeenth century gave her a great prestige which 
she had to defend against England, who was bent, at that time, 
on economic prosperity and the conquest of markets and colo- 
nies. Never had the choice between land and sea, the problem 
as to what balance to keep between the complex interests in 
order to turn them to the good of the country, demanded such 
close attention as after the treaty of Utrecht. Through the 
initiative of enterprising Frenchmen, which Henry IV, Riche- 
lieu, and Colbert had successively approved, the French had 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 217 


laid the basis of a colonial empire which was to excite the jeal- 
ousy of England and interfere with her development as much 
as the Spanish colonial empire had done. The French posses- 
sions comprised almost all of North America, from Canada to 
the Gulf of Mexico, the finest of the Antilles, some settlements 
in Africa and in India, possible forerunners of vast establish- 
ments. At all of these points France had preceded the English 
who had been distracted during the greater part of the seven- 
teenth century by revolutions, and France was standing as a 
barrier to their future. France should have expected their 
jealousy and their hostility. It was to their interest that she 
should engage in sterile enterprises in Europe and neglect her 
navy, for a country who neglects her navy does not long keep 
her colonies. 

After the disaster of La Hogue the French public was dis- 
gusted with naval affairs. It was equally disgusted with 
colonial enterprises after the failure of Law’s System, founded 
on the exploitation of the wealth overseas. No one has ex- 
pressed this state of mind better than Voltaire in his disparaging 
remark about the “acres of snow in Canada.” That was the 
way they pictured the American possessions. Public interest 
still centered about the old questions, although they had been 
successively regulated by the treaties of Westphalia, the 
Pyrenees and Utrecht. Mention of the struggle against the 
house of Austria was always sure to draw a response from the 
French. This struggle had no longer any cause for existence, 
but tradition was stronger than reason. There was a large and 
eloquent party for whom the enemy was still Austria, and any 
government which would combat the house of Hapsburg was 
sure of popularity. In this respect also, the Regency, in seek- 
ing the good graces of public opinion, for the reasons which 
we have noted before, added to the evils of the reign of 
Louis XV. 

At the time when they died, both the regent and Cardinal 
Dubois had changed front. They had entered into a new 
triple alliance, Franco-English-Spanish, against the Emperor 
Charles VI, whom they wished to drive out of Italy in 


218 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


order to install there the Spanish Bourbons. England took part 
in this undertaking, disregarding the treaty of Utrecht, in 
order to ruin the maritime enterprises of Charles VI at Os- 
tend, at Trieste, and at Fiume. She had made a good bargain 
and had entered the alliance on the condition that France should 
give up her commerce in Spain. This policy followed Eng- 
land’s plan of suppressing all naval and commercial rivals by 
exploiting the quarrels, ambitions, and errors of the other 
European powers. This project, arrested by the death of those 
in France who had conceived it, was not put into execution, but 
it nevertheless had consequences. In order to seal the recon- 
ciliation of the houses of France and Spain, Dubois and the 
regent had arranged a marriage between Louis XV and a five- 
year-old infanta. Whether or not it was intended, this would 
have retarded the time when the crown would have an heir. It 
is, therefore, difficult to blame the Duke of Bourbon on this 
point who, having become prime minister after the death of 
Dubois, undid what the latter had done and sent the young in- 
fanta back to Spain. This angered Philip V, who at once be- 
came reconciled with the emperor. But this reconciliation was 
more to the interest of the French than a war in which Spain 
and Austria, who were both useful to France, would have been 
exhausted and she with them, while England alone would profit 
thereby. It has been said that in arranging a modest marriage 
for Louis XV, by giving him as wife, Marie Leczinska, daughter 
of the dethroned king of Poland, the Duke of Bourbon and 
Madame de Prie intended to dominate the future queen. There 
is some truth in the imputation, but the choice was difficult since 
they had previously vainly demanded the hand of an English 
princess. Moreover, Marie Leczinska was twenty-two years old 
and would probably soon have children. This, by assuring the 
succession would abolish the intrigues which had troubled the 
minority of Louis XV, whose frail health aroused so many 
hopes and jealousies. It is only too certain in any case that the 
monarchy suffered a considerable deterioration under the 
Regency, owing largely to the fact that death had interrupted 
the natural order of succession and Louis XIV had left only a 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 219 


great-grandson. But this deterioration may perhaps count 
among the distant causes of the Revolution. 

Historians in general reproach Louis XV for his indolence 
and his apathy. It is true that he did not always impose his 
will even when he was in the right, and in this he showed good 
judgment. However, and this is where he differed from Louis 
XVI, he did not doubt his own authority and he showed it on 
several occasions. Historians seem to regret that he should not 
have controlled the government in as personal a manner as his 
great-grandfather had done. Perhaps they do not reflect that 
the circumstances in the midst of which Louis XV attained his 
majority were in no way similar to those existing in 1660. The 
desire for strong leadership which was then felt had ceased to 
exist. The critical spirit dominated everything. This period 
marks the beginning of the vogue for English institutions, de- 
veloped by Montesquieu and Voltaire, and favored by the 
regent’s attempt at reforms. The task of governing had become 
as difficult as it was clear and simple at the beginning of the 
reign of Louis XIV. 

It was, however, by an act of authority that Louis XV began 
his reign at the age of sixteen, when he dismissed the Duke of 
Bourbon, much as Louis XIII had rid himself of the tutelage 
of Concini. The young king had given his confidence to his 
preceptor Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus. It was a happy choice: 
this wise old man directed affairs with prudence. For fifteen 
years France had an intelligent and economieal administration 
which restored her finances and reéstablished prosperity in the 
kingdom—a proof that bankruptcy was not inevitable after 
the War of the Spanish Succession and the evils of Law’s 
System. 

After all her crises, France had only needed a few years of 
work and order to restore the country to ease and wealth. Her 
brilliant civilization of the eighteenth century could not be ex- 
plained without this economic renaissance which was singularly 
aided by the bureaucratic traditions left by the preceding cen- 
tury. One is tempted to criticize the bureaucracy, yet it was 
at the time almost indispensable. Orry, whose name remains 


220 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


obscure, was a worthy successor of Colbert in the management 
of the public funds. The famous d’Aguesseau continued the 
legislative work that Colbert had begun, and many of his ordi- 
nances have been reproduced in the Civil Code. 

Applying himself to the rehabilitation of France, Fleury 
avoided external complications. He did not entertain any very 
great vision of European politics, but he had a keen sense for 
the useful and the necessary. The black cloud on the European 
horizon at that moment was the Austrian succession which pre- 
sented itself in an entirely different light from that of Spain. 
The emperor, Charles VI, having only daughters, was very 
anxious to leave his hereditary states to the Archduchess Maria 
Theresa, and was attempting to have all the powers guarantee 
the provisions of his will, by signing the “Pragmatic Sanction.” 
A large party in France claimed that the house of Austria was 
the enemy of the kingdom and that their country had no inter- 
est in helping to perpetuate it; they held rather that no oppor- 
tunity should be lost to crush it. They were anti-Austrian in 
the name of tradition and the principles of Richelieu. Thus, 
over a question of foreign politics, arose a controversy which was 
to degenerate into a conflict and at a future date was to become 
fatal to the monarchy itself. Fleury contented himself with 
watching events and with baffling intrigues that might endanger 
peace. He also refused to sign the “Pragmatic Sanction” of 
Charles VI, in order to avoid internal difficulties, and thought 
to hold the emperor by the possible hope of his signature. But 
for all his prudence, Fleury, who was accused by public opinion 
of being pusillanimous, as Louis Philippe was to be a hundred 
years later, found himself compelled to intervene in 1733 when 
the independence of Poland was in danger. France has always 
needed an ally who could attack Germany from behind and 
Sweden, who had formerly fulfilled this function, was now un- 
able to do so inasmuch as she was at grips with Russia which 
had recently come to the fore under Peter the Great. The 
appearance of the Russian power in the system of European 
politics is the cause of many of the upheavals from which 
France has had to suffer. The independence of Poland and 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 221 


the Polish alliance were as much precepts of French politics 
at that time as they were later in 1918, and they caused her 
much embarrassment in the eighteenth century. 

It was not, then, to sustain the father-in-law of Louis XV 
that Fleury intervened in favor of Stanislas for the throne of 
Poland, against the Elector of Saxony, but to sustain the inde- 
pendence of Poland, which was menaced both by the empire 
and by Russia, who wished to establish August IIT as king. 
Only, one can easily understand, it was not easy to defend 
Poland, caught between the Germans and the Russians, if she 
was not capable of helping herself. Plélo perished in a vain 
attempt to deliver Danzig. France was reduced to a diversion 
against the empire, into which the anti-Austrian party threw 
themselves with joy. Villars and the Chevalier de Belle-Isle, 
the grandson of Fouquet, were among the most ardent. Fleury 
curbed these wild spirits both young and old, as well as he could. 
The cause of Stanislas was already lost, because the Poles could 
not remain united in the face of the invader. Fleury took care 
to limit the risks and to keep the war from becoming general by 
obtaining the neutrality of England through a promise not to 
attack the Low Countries. His one thought was to get out of 
this unfortunate situation advantageously and he negotiated 
the treaty of Vienna (1738) through which he guaranteed the 
“Pragmatic Sanction.” In exchange for and in lieu of his 
loss, Stanislas, evicted from Poland, received Lorraine which at 
his death, was to return to the crown of France; while Duke 
Francis of Lorraine, in order to marry Maria Theresa, re- 
nounced his rights to the duchy. This was a diplomatic and 
advantageous solution of several difficulties at once. Yet until 
that time no means had been found of uniting this French prov- 
ince with France and in spite of perpetual conflicts with the 
princes of Lorraine and even in spite of a prolonged occupation 
of their territory, the monarchy had never wished to annex Lor- 
raine by violence, and against the wish of the inhabitants. 

Reason demanded that France should stop here, and such was 
the opinion of Fleury, legitimately proud of having attained 
these results without the interested mediation of England. But 


222 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


in France, the anti-Austrian party complained that Fleury had 
ceded too much to Austria and regretted that instead of brief 
campaigns on the Rhine and in Italy, an army had not been 
sent into Bohemia. The minister of foreign affairs, Chauvelin, 
was the most bellicose of the Austro-phobes. Fleury, that he 
might be able to sign the peace of Vienna, had persuaded Louis 
XV to disgrace and dismiss Chauvelin. This was the first 
episode in that great conflict of opinions. It had been managed 
well and without injury to France. 

The two most important men in Europe at this moment, 
Fleury and Walpole, were both working for peace. One would 
have thought then that when the emperor died, his succession 
would have been accomplished without difficulty. But there 
were other forces to be reckoned with, forces which were then 
at work in England. 

Walpole was the first to be forced to abandon his policy. 
England, who was constantly seeking to develop her commerce, 
coveted the Spanish colonies. Spain, having been driven to 
defend herself against veritable expropriation, the English 
merchants and shipbuilders became exasperated, the British 
parliament listened to them and Walpole yielded, preferring, 
according to a well-known saying, an unjust war to a stormy 
session. The war on the sea had lasted for a year between 
England and Spain, and Spain was, moreover, successfully de- 
fending herself. France, remaining neutral, began to see that 
she was being menaced through Spain and that it would be 
prudent to arm herself on the sea, when the emperor died in the 
month of October, 1740. He also had entertained an illusion 
similar to that of Fleury and Walpole. He had thought that 
the signed compacts would suffice to guarantee peace and the 
inheritance of his daughter. All went well at first. The Elec- 
tor of Bavaria, who had pretensions to the imperial crown, alone 
raised a protest, when, without warning and violating all the 
rules of international morality, the King of Prussia invaded 
Silesia, an Austrian province. 

From the day when the Elector of Brandenburg had taken 
the title of king, Prussia had been silently growing powerful. 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 223 


Frederick William, the sergeant king, had by force of appli- 
cation, organization, and economy, built up a strong state and a 
strong army. His son, Frederick II, who had just succeeded 
him, had deceived every one with regard to his ambitions. He 
had spent an undisciplined youth and had displayed a taste for 
French literature and taken pains to acquire popularity in 
France through his protection and flattery of her writers, espe- 
cially her most celebrated writer, Voltaire. Frederick IT passed 
for an enlightened prince, a friend of progress and of the ideas 
that were called new, and whose vogue was spreading. His bold 
stroke of invading Silesia, which should have aroused indigna- 
tion, was, on the contrary received with applause because he had 
dealt a blow at Austria, still considered as the traditional enemy 
of France. 

At this moment, Fleury, in spite of his prudence, found 
himself obliged to intervene in the English-Spanish war which 
was menacing the maritime interests of France to a very serious 
extent. Belle-Isle and the anti-Austrian party skillfully allied 
the Austrian succession and England’s war with Spain. They 
claimed that Austria was an English ally, that the time to strike 
at her had come and that in doing so, France would strike at 
England as well. This reasoning overlooked two things—the 
sea and Prussia. But Frederick IT passed for one of those 
German princes like the Electors of Bavaria and the Palatinate, 
who had formerly been associated with the French against the 
emperor’s party. Furthermore, he was sympathetic. The cur- 
rent became so strong in favor of the Prussian alliance and the 
war that Fleury, old, weary, and afraid that if he resisted he 
would lose the government, as Walpole had feared, finally 
yielded. Louis XV himself yielded. He was wrong, since he 
did not approve of this war and said that it would be preferable 
for France to stand aside and watch the others fight. He saw 
correctly, but unfortunately for France, he did not impose his 
opinion. It may have been indolence; it may also have been 
the feeling that the monarchy, weakened since the Regency, was 
not sufficiently strong to combat the strength of public opinion. 

Thus in 1741 France entered into a continental war whose 


224. HISTORY OF FRANCE 


first effect was to turn her away from the maritime war, in 
which, in concert with Spain, she might have dealt England 
some sufficiently hard blows to arrest her in her pursuit of 
hegemony. For greatly to the surprise of England, her squad- 
rons, insufficiently organized, had suffered some mortifying de- 
feats. But in France, every one favored the undertaking with 
Germany, which Fleury at least attempted to limit, determined 
that England should not enter this new conflict. The experience 
of the Spanish succession had taught him the cost of a war of 
coalitions in which England was involved. 

However, the French were indignant at Fleury’s prudence; 
it seemed to them senile. They had the illusion, skillfully 
flattered by Frederick, that they were the masters of Europe. 
During the first year of their campaign, success attended the 
Marshal de Belle-Isle, who had led his troops to the very walls 
of Vienna, marched into Bohemia and by a bold stroke seized 
Prague. In January, 1742, France’s ally, the Elector of Ba- 
varia, was elected emperor at Frankfort and there was a cry 
of triumph in France; at last the imperial crown had been taken 
away from the house of Austria. But at the very moment of 
this rejoicing, the temporary nature of these successes became 
plain. Maria Theresa had not given way before her reverses. 
The Hungarians, her best troops, stood by her. She knew that 
she could count on the English. She had already negotiated 
with Frederick, a very unstable ally of France, whose only 
thought was to withdraw from the game and make sure of his 
winnings. ‘Three weeks after the coronation of the new em- 
peror, Bavaria was invaded by the Austrians; she was no longer 
anything but a dead weight on the hands of the French. At 
the same time, the English were preparing to intervene actively 
in favor of Austria, and the King of Prussia, not wishing to 
incur their enmity, hastened to accept the bargain offered him 
by Maria Theresa, in other words, all of Silesia, as the price 
of this defection. 

In vain had Fleury counseled peace ever since the month of 
January, after the election at Frankfurt. He immediately un- 
derstood the gravity of the situation in which Prussia’s treason 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 225 


had placed France. Trusting to the force of reason, he con- 
ceived the idea of addressing a confidential letter to Maria 
Theresa in which he represented that it was to the interest of 
neither Austria nor France to continue the struggle. Maria 
Theresa, through spite, had the indiscretion to publish this 
letter, fanning the indignation against Fleury and against Aus- 
tria, and rendering any reconciliation the more difficult since 
her ill-natured act and her pride only increased the unpopu- 
larity of the house she represented. It is true that at this mo- 
ment she was counting on a complete victory. Belle-Isle, iso- 
lated in Bohemia, had to lead his army back in mid-winter with 
heavy losses. Chevert, blockaded at Prague, capitulated. The 
brilliant successes of the beginning had turned to disaster and 
there arose in France a perfect storm of recriminations against 
every one, which only added to the already troubled state of 
public opinion. 

The worst of it was that the French could no longer withdraw 
from the war. The classic diversions which were attempted, 
through Sweden and through Italy, did not succeed. In the 
beginning of 1743 when Fleury died, broken by years and grief, 
affairs in France were going badly. England had an army in 
Germany, raised the more easily inasmuch as King George was 
at the same time Elector of Hanover. The Anglo-Hanoverians 
succeeded in giving a helping hand to Austria after the battle 
of Dettingen. The French troops had to evacuate Germany, re- 
cross the Rhine and, thrown back upon the defenses of Vauban, 
protect their frontiers. 

Then came a veritable overhauling of French policy. This 
check at last opened the eyes of the French. The real enemy of 
France was not Austria, but England who was always crossing 
her path. She was the soul of all the coalitions. France had 
therefore been mistaken in carrying on war in Germany, in 
working directly for the Elector of Bavaria, unworthy of the 
rôle conceived for him, and indirectly for the perfidious and 
dangerous King of Prussia. It was imperative, with regard to 
Germany, that France should return to her true tradition, that 
of the treaty of Westphalia, and assume toward Germany only 


226 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the réle of protector of the Germanic liberties and equilibrium. 
The next step was to turn her forces against England in order 
to drive her from the continent and to strike at her in that 
country where her alliance with Austria and Holland had in- 
stalled her, but where it had left her vulnerable, namely in 
Flanders. Then it would be possible for France to liquidate her 
recent error with honor and obtain peace. 

This well thought-out plan, proposed by the Marshal de 
Noailles, was accepted by Louis XV. Preparations were made 
during the winter to carry it out and in the spring, a strong 
army, accompanied by the king himself, invaded the coast dis- 
tricts of Flanders and seized Ypres and Furnes. It is true that 
in the meantime the Austrians, by a bold march, had entered 
Alsace. Frederick II, who was watching events, ready to keep 
an equal balance between the adversaries, feared lest Austria 
should become too powerful. He broke his contract of neutral- 
ity and began a swift diversion in Bohemia. The Austrians 
were thus forced to leave Alsace as quickly as they had entered. 
It was at this moment that Louis XV, having followed De 
Noailles to Metz, fell dangerously ill. Hus recovery caused ex- 
traordinary enthusiasm in France; the danger the country was 
incurring aroused the national sentiment symbolized by the 
monarchy, and rarely had France seen so ardent a loyalty as 
was then manifested. It was a sign of the powerful hold that 
royalty had acquired during the reign of Louis XIV. France 
could not forget that a hundred years before she had been on the 
eve of the Fronde. 

The French were installed in a corner of Flanders, and they 
had repelled an invasion; but their affairs were scarcely advanc- 
ing when the situation brightened in the beginning of 1745. 
Charles VII of Bavaria died. The imperial crown was free 
for the Archduke of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, 
and an arrangement with Austria was becoming possible. To 
obtain this, it was necessary for France to carry out the plan 
of De Noailles, concentrate her effort upon Flanders and defeat 
the English there. Maurice of Saxony, an experienced captain, 
one of those Germans who had formerly served as volunteer for 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 227 


France, was placed at the head of a large army and marched 
boldly upon Tournay. The English who were attempting to de- 
liver this important place on the Dutch border, the barrier 
determined by the treaty of Utrecht against France, were de- 
feated at Fontenoy in the presence of Louis XV, (1745). This 
famous victory, in which the French commander is credited with 
the chivalrous “Englishmen, fire the first shot,’ was followed 
by other successes and soon gave France control of all Belgium. 
Louis XV entered Antwerp in triumph. The Dutch who had 
again overturned the republic and reéstablished the stadthold- 
erate, as in the preceding century, were brought to terms by the 
taking of Berg-op-Zoom. But it was not enough for France to 
be victorious in the Low Countries. The theatre of the war 
was far wider. She was defeated in Italy and, as in the six- 
teenth century, Provence was invaded by the imperial army. 
Frederick II was accomplishing his design in Germany; he 
defeated the Saxons; entered Dresden; and then, again betray- 
ing France, made a settlement with Austria by which she left 
him Silesia while he recognized the new emperor, Francis of 
Lorraine. Finally, and most important of all, the English, 
now masters of the sea, had for a moment been able to land a 
force on the coast of Brittany. The conflict had extended to the 
colonies and the French were defending themselves as best they 
could in Canada and in India where Dupleix, with but feeble 
means, was doing a splendid work. By continuing the war, 
France might perhaps keep the Austrian Low Countries; but in 
that case peace with England would be impossible, and France 
would lose her colonies. Hostilities would still continue with 
Austria, and the French had already learned that it was im- 
possible to count on Frederick. It seemed wiser to liquidate 
while they still held some guaranties. Thus this first Seven 
Years’ War ended by an inconclusive peace in 1748. 

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle has become a monument of 
absurdity. From it has come the proverbial expression, “Stupid 
as the treaty.” But if the basis of the war had been bad, how 
could the peace be good? All that the French had gained in 
the eighteenth century, by resuming the policy against the Haps- 


228 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


burgs which had been opportune in the seventeenth, was that 
they strengthened Prussia and destroyed the equilibrium of 
Europe. Frederick was the beneficiary of the fault commit- 
ted by France in 1741. In the campaign he had held the bal- 
ance of power, lending aid to France just so long as it was to his 
interest and not a moment longer. Again, he was to hold this 
balance, with even greater power, for he was stronger than he 
had been before. From this time it was clear that Prussia was 
aspiring to take the place of Austria in Germany and that her 
ambition was unlimited. Consequently, if France persisted 
in her anti-Austrian policy, she would be working for Frederick. 
If she changed her system, reversed her alliances, she would 
have Frederick as an enemy. In either case, England, with 
whom she had settled nothing and with whom her colonial 
rivalry continued, would find an armed ally on the continent. 
This is what the error of Belle-Isle’s party, the anachronism 
of the struggle against the house of Austria, had cost France. 
French policy had become muddled. It had ceased to be in- 
telligible to the nation and in this mass of contradictions, it was 
hardly so for those who were directing affairs, and needed 
above everything to find again some guiding principle. The 
extraordinary complexity of a Europe, of a world which was 
changing from day to day, aggravated the conflict of opinions 
and the theories and this conflict itself rendered the task of 
French politics more difficult and opened the door to intrigues 
and intriguers. It was in the midst of this confusion that was 
formed the famous “secret du rot,’ or secret diplomacy which 
meant the superposition of one diplomacy upon another, the sur- 
veillance of one diplomacy by another. It was to take France 
a long time to repair the damage caused by the senseless War 
of the Austrian Succession and to build up a new political 
method. | 

There is nothing stranger than the state of mind in France 
in the middle of the eighteenth century. Never had there been 
such content, never had life been easier. We can see this by 
the painting, the furniture, the buildings, the monuments, and 
the public works. If the state, after the war, found itself in 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 229 


new financial difficulties, they were not tragic and France has 
seen worse. On the whole, what the French had to complain of 
was as a wrinkle in a rose leaf compared to so many of the 
calamities they had already suffered and were to suffer again. 
One is struck by another thing as well. The writers of the time 
were demanding reforms. The administration which was daily 
becoming more and more regular, was working to accomplish 
them, but it met with constant opposition because it is impos- 
sible to reform anything without disturbing special interests. 
Parliament resisted the authority of the king and refused to 
ratify the taxes as in the days of the Fronde. And what were 
these taxes? They were war taxes; after the provisional 
“tenth,” there was the permanent “‘twentieth” instituted by the 
controller-general Machault, and which, as Louis XIV had 
formerly desired, were to affect every one. without regard to 
privileges or privileged. 

Twice, in 1753 and in 1755, it was to be necessary to exile 
and imprison the members of parliament, who would not give 
in, considering themselves as charged to defend the “customs 
of the kingdom,” among which, the first in their eyes was the 
fiscal immunity of the magistracy. It was here, as in the for- 
eign policy, that the opposition was fighting for the past and 
the government for progress. We have thus a very different 
picture of the old régime, from that which represents it as the 
defender of fiscal privileges. The truth is that history has re- 
corded the complaints, the wrath, the slogans, of those who 
were unwilling to pay. Already at the end of the reign of 
Louis XIV, Saint-Simon, indignant at the head tax, and the 
“tenth,” which did not spare the great nobles, characterized 
them as a “monstrous exaction.” He had even written that 
“the King was bleeding his subjects and squeezing them even to 
the pus.” Under Louis XV, Madame du Deffand was to say, 
“They are taxing everything except the air which we breathe” 
—which was to be heard again in the time of the Revolution 
concerning the tax on doors and windows. It is necessary, 
therefore, to take these lamentations that literature has brought 
down to us, for what they are worth. They emanate from sev- 


230 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


eral categories of persons, almost all rich or at least comfortable, 
who up to that time had escaped taxation and paid only what 
they pleased. Among these persons, the greatest number be- 
longed to the bourgeoisie, to the Third Estate, holders of those 
offices and those charges of the magistracy which entitled them 
to exemption. Among the protests against the “twentieth,” the 
most just was without doubt that in which parliament, in order 
to find an honorable pretext for its opposition, took up the 
cause of the poor nobility of the country districts, who were 
forced to render military service. 

We can thus understand the difficulties with which the old 
régime was confronted in the eighteenth century, in establish- 
ing some sort of order in its finances. We can understand 
whence arose the continual deficit. Contemporaries have ob- 
scured the situation by blaming only the prodigalities of the 
court. It was because of these financial troubles in a time 
when morals were far from rigid, that there was more ill will 
towards the favorites, Madame de Pompadour or Madame du 
Barry, than there had ever been towards Madame de Montespan. 
Then also there appeared many books against absolutism which 
became immensely popular. In reality the power of the king, 
far from being absolute, was held in check by parliament whose 
opposition to the financial reforms paralyzed the government 
and made its administration of the kingdom impossible. 

Louis XIV, at the beginning of his reign, had, by his own 
authority, brought parliament back to its judicial rôle, and as 
the country had just passed through the Fronde, public opinion 
approved his action. We have seen how the Regency, having 
need of the magistrates in order to set aside the will of Louis 
XIV, had restored the political power of parliament. It only 
profited by this power to refuse to ratify the taxes. It also in- 
tervened, with equal zeal, in the religious controversies of the 
day. For many years in France, a controversy raged over the 
bull, Unigenitus, which was nothing more nor less than the old 
dispute for and against Jansenism—and parliament was usually 
Jansenist. These clerical agitations, these wars of doctrine and 
of pen, involved nothing new. They set against each other 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 231 


eternal tendencies which had clashed much more violently in the 
Middle Ages and at the time of the Reformation. Whatever 
may have been the illusions of contemporaries who imagined 
that it was all without precedent, what have been called the 
great debates of the eighteenth century pertained only to very 
old subjects. A new element was added to be sure; the cam- 
paign of the philosophers and the encyclopedists against the 
Catholic church. It resulted, therefore, that the Jansenist par- 
liament had the support of the deistic or unbelieving philoso- 
phers who were stirring up public opinion against the abuses 
that parliament was protecting and against the bull which in- 
volved the religious question. Curiously enough, the courts 
which were conservative and reactionary when it was a ques- 
tion of privileges and which clung to old customs, even includ- 
ing torture, were, for some fifteen years, the allies of the writ- 
ers who in all things demanded reform and the abolition of the 
past. On the other hand, the government found itself in the 
presence of the Catholics and clergy who supported the bull; 
also of the parliament which opposed not only the bull but also 
the reforms and the taxes; and also of the philosophers who 
stirred up public opinion against the abuses which parliament 
protected and against the bull which raised the religious ques- 
tion. One will agree that the task of the government was not 
an easy one. It had to find its way between all these currents 
and one is astonished to see to what a degree it showed itself 
free from prejudice. In fact, if, to obtain religious peace, 
it ended by imposing upon the magistrates the registering of 
the bull, on the other hand it allowed them to expel the Jesuits 
in order to obtain the ratifying of the taxes. And just as the 
monarchy had not persecuted Protestantism in its beginning, 
so it did not seek to stifle the philosophers and the encyclo- 
pedia. It even had ministers who protected them and used 
them and their influence on public opinion, either like Choiseul 
to come to terms with parliament, or like Maupeou to combat 
and dissolve it. 

The only thing that remained to render the question of taxes 
more serious than they already were was a new war. A con- 


232 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


flict with England in the middle of the eighteenth century, was 
fatal to the French. War had been continuous in the colonies. 
The work of Dupleix was disavowed in India where he had been 
building an empire for France. This sacrifice was useless as 
far as peace was concerned. In America, the English colonies 
in the east were attacking the French Canadians and were re- 
ceiving aid from London. When the French government be- 
came alarmed and wished to send reinforcements to Canada, 
her ships were stopped and seized by the English fleet. To the 
protests made at London by the French government, the English 
replied that hostilities had already commenced. In May, 1756, 
France’s declaration of war was the card forced at England’s 
wish. To defend her own country, France found herself en- 
gaged in a great conflict for something which she did not desire 
and which she regarded as of secondary inportance—namely 
the maritime and colonial interests which had become all-im- 
portant in the minds of the English people. 

But France’s conflict with the English necessarily brought 
about a general war. It is here that the fatal consequences of 
the mistake made in 1741 appeared. Prussia thought only of 
keeping Silesia, Austria of recapturing it. The seizure of this 
province dominated the politics of Europe. As early as Jan- 
uary, 1756, Frederick had signed with George II, Elector of 
Hanover as well as King of England, a treaty which guaranteed 
his conquests. In the conflict between France and England, he 
took the part of France’s adversary. Whether they liked it or 
not, France and Austria found themselves thrown together. 
Through the first treaty of Versailles, in the very month of 
France’s rupture with England, a defensive alliance was con- 
cluded between the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs. A year 
later this alliance was made firmer when Frederick invaded 
Saxony as he had invaded Silesia, and made evident the ambi- 
tion of Prussia to bring all Germany under her control. 

This “reversing of alliances’ was an important event in 
French history. Naturally the Austro-phobes, the blind up- 
holders of the old tradition, protested, and the worst of it was 
that soon, in the eyes of the public, the unfortunate result of the 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 233 


war seemed to justify them. From the Austrian alliance dates 
the divorce of the monarchy and the nation, and thirty-five years 
later it was to be the most powerful grievance of the revolution- 
ists—the cause that was to give them the means of condemning 
Louis XVI. 

Report had it that royalty had renounced its former policy 
and abandoned the struggle against the house of Austria only 
through a court intrigue. Frederick did his best to make this 
believed and as he already had one woman as adversary (the 
Empress of Russia was yet to become one) he accused Madame 
de Pompadour, “Cotillon II,” of having sacrificed the interests 
of France to the vain pleasure of carrying on a correspondence 
with the daughter of the Hapsburgs. It is true that Maria 
Theresa, her minister Kaunitz, and her ambassador Stahrem- 
berg, omitted no flattery towards the “favorite.” It is also true 
that the house of Babiole where the preliminaries took place and 
the part which with Madame de Pompadour was there taken by 
the Abbé Bernis, a man of the court and the author of “vers 
galants,” give to the reversing of the alliances an air of frivolity. 
It was, however, a serious and well-deliberated operation. By 
the first treaty of Versailles, the French government had con- 
cluded only a defensive alliance. This was extended after the 
aggression and success of Frederick; but, by a second treaty, 
France lent her aid to Austria in return for the promise to ex- 
tend the French frontier in the southern part of the Austrian 
Low Countries, from Ostend to Chimay. The remainder was 
to form an independent state, the outline of the future Belgium, 
which should be given to the Prince of Parma, son-in-law of 
Louis XV. It is only in our own day that the instructions of 
Bernis, who had become minister of foreign affairs, to Choiseul, 
named ambassador to Vienna, have become generally known and 
they show that the alliance with Austria was the result of cal- 
culation and not of caprice. “Experience has proved,” said 
Bernis, “that the French have been wrong to contribute to the 
agerandizement of the King of Prussia. It is to the interest of 
France to see that no power dominates Germany and that the 
treaty of Westphalia is respected.” Now Frederick had seized 


234 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the occasion of the French conflict with England to ally himself 
with that power, with the idea that France would be too much 
occupied on the sea to oppose his movements in the Germanic 
countries. If France were to leave the King of Prussia to fight 
it out alone with Austria, there would be serious danger that 
he would attain his ends and that the German system would be 
overturned to the detriment of France. There remained no 
choice but to respond to the advances of Austria and join with 
her to maintain the equilibrium of Europe. 

In 1756 and 1757, Bernis perceived that the danger in Ger- 
many was Prussian. He also saw how heavy the task of France 
was to become since, at the very moment that England was pro- 
voking her to a formidable conflict, Frederick was involving her 
in a continental war and in the complexities of the affairs of 
central and eastern Europe. This situation was aggravated by 
the fact that the Empress of Russia was entering into the coali- 
tion against Prussia. This meant that France would have to 
protect her other and her former ally, Poland, against the greed 
of both Austria and Russia, her present associates. Further- 
more, in order to obtain the aid of Russia, France had had to 
persuade Poland not to take any part in the conflict. We thus 
have some idea of the veritable maze in which French policy 
more than once lost its way while trying to solve some of the 
contradictions. But we cannot at one and the same time blame 
the secret diplomacy of the king and the overturning of the 
alliances, since the “secret” was Polish and was for the purpose 
of preserving the future of the French relations with Poland 
in spite of the alliance with Russia and Austria. 

The war on the sea had begun well in spite of the inferiority 
of the French naval forces. The Marshal de Richelieu had 
landed at Minorca and taken Port-Mahon. This success, which 
liberated the Mediterranean and allowed the French to install 
themselves in Corsica, gave them, besides, the promise of the 
alliance of Spain. For England it was a check which greatly 
irritated her. Nothing shows the pitiless character of this 
struggle more than the fury with which the mass of the English 
demanded the execution of Admiral Byng. 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 235 


In spite of this brilliant beginning the state of mind in 
France was bad. The conflict with the parliaments still contin- 
ued. It became worse when it was necessary to ask for the 
registering of the edicts imposing temporary taxes and creating 
new ones. It was, however, indispensable to find resources for 
carrying on the war by land and sea. In the provinces which 
voted their own contributions, the assemblies and parliaments 
resisted, and it was the beginning of the long and serious con- 
flict with the States of Brittany. At the same time the religious 
quarrels over the bull, Unigenitus, sprang up again. The gov- 
ernment was driven to extreme measures. One lit de justice, 
a special court, at which the king presided, imposed the king’s 
will in the matter of the taxes and another, in the matter of re- 
ligious disputes. The parliament of Paris replied by resigning 
en masse, which caused great excitement. The attempt of Fran- 
cis Damiens, a few days after, against the life of the king, was 
one of the symptoms (January, 1757). The dangers which the 
king had run at least had the effect of inspiring a fear of an up- 
heaval in France. There were great manifestations of loyalty 
and the resignations were withdrawn. But if the external order 
was not troubled, the moral disorder persisted. The reverses of 
the Seven Years’ War were falling on bad ground and this 
double war against England and Prussia, so serious in its conse- 
quences, and which demanded such effort on the part of every 
one, was little understood. The literature of the day bears wit- 
ness to the fact that its significance escaped the guides of public 
opinion. The attitude generally was one of indifference or dis- 
paragement. 

Naval warfare is an affair of organization. It requires long 
preparation and much money. Three industrious ministers, 
Maurepas, Rouillé and Machault, had worked in vain to rem- 
edy the naval inferiority of France. In the meantime, with an 
implacable will which the first Pitt personified, the English, 
after the French victory at Port-Mahon, had become masters 
of the sea again and had seized the French colonies with whom 
communication with the mother country had been cut off. In 
spite of a glorious resistance, Montcalm succumbed in Canada 


236 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


and Lally-Tollendal in India. One by one, the French posses- 
sions were falling into the hands of the English. 

It is more difficult to understand why the war in Germany 
should have turned out so badly for France. It is true that the 
French generals committed some blunders. But even they 
also seemed to lack the sacred fire of conviction; d’Estrées has 
been suspected of having been hostile to the Austrian alliance. 
And although Frederick II, of whom this war made a Germanic 
hero, finally escaped the quadruple alliance—the formidable 
coalition which was attacking him—he owed his safety not to 
his military talents alone, but to a sort of popularity which the 
philosophic and literary fashion of the day, carefully cultivated 
by Frederick, had given him even among his adversaries. His 
popularity was increased as a result of the unpopularity of the 
Austrian alliance. 

In 1757, Prussia, attacked on four sides at once, seemed on 
the point of succumbing. The French had defeated the Anglo- 
Hanoverians who had capitulated at Klosterhaven. This de 
prived the English of their means of carrying on the conflict on 
the continent; but they never bowed before a continental disaster 
so long as they were masters of the sea. The states of Frederick 
were invaded by the Swedes, the Russians, and the Austrians, 
who had just entered Berlin. The French army, with an im- 
portant contingent furnished by the German princes, was ad- 
vancing towards Saxony. Frederick met them at Rosbach, 
overthrew the twenty thousand Germans, who disbanded; and 
he then conquered the French under Soubise. 

The French had undergone more serious defeats in the 
course of their history, but none had caused such humiliation as 
the one at Rosbach. Mingled with this shame a new and un- 
fortunate spirit began to show itself in France; a delight of 
accusing her own generals of incapacity and in contrasting the 
luxury of her officers with the simple virtues of the conquerors. 
Never had admiration for an enemy gone so far; it continued 
and Prussia profited by it until the eve of 1870. Frederick of 
Hohenzollern passed as the type of the enlightened ruler, his 
victories for those of progress and even of liberty. He was, 





THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 237 


however, a despot, an absolute sovereign, and one of the most 
dictatorial. His method was that of militarism, of corporalism, 
of stiff-necked Prussian discipline, quite the opposite of liberal 
government. It took more than a century for this fact to be 
appreciated. 

After Rosbach, Bernis felt that the war with Germany was 
doomed and that it would be better to withdraw. In the coun- 
cil, the opposite opinion prevailed. The campaign was contin- 
ued throughout the year 1758 with a series of successes and 
failures which brought no result. Frederick was holding his 
own against the Austrians and Russians. It seemed impossible, 
however, that he could avoid being crushed. Still another 
effort and the coalition would put an end to Prussia. This was 
the thesis of Choiseul, the partisan of the Austrian alliance, 
who quitted his ambassadorship to Vienna to succeed the dis- 
couraged Bernis. 

If the war was to be continued, Choiseul was right in think- 
ing that no definite result could be obtained so long as France 
was powerless on the sea. To overcome this defect, it was not 
only necessary to reénforce her navy as much as possible while 
hostilities were going on, but also to find naval allies. Spain, 
although fallen, still counted; Naples was in a good position on 
the Mediterranean and Bourbons were reigning at Madrid and 
at Naples as well as at Paris. In helping them to secure these 
realms, France ought not to have worked in vain. To add the 
pacte de famille to the Austrian alliance was Choiseul’s policy. 

Although the idea was good, it came too late. Moreover, 
Choiseul was too ambitious. He organized a descent upon Eng- 
land but the English fleet, which had been blockading the 
French coast for a long time, defeated at Lagos the fleet of 
Toulon which was attempting to reach Brest; and in the Mor- 
bihan, the “day of M. de Conflans” was a disaster equal to 
that of La Hogue. A diversion of the French pirates in Ire- 
land was useless. And the pacte de famille itself, signed in 
1761, was this time of no avail. Spain was not ready and 
the English profited by the fact to seize some Spanish colonies. 
With her hands full and master of the island off Brittany, she 


238 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


nevertheless, as in 1711, began to grow tired of the heavy ex- 
penses of the war. Pitt fell, and the pacific Tories returned to 
power. In the meantime, the circle of Germany’s enemies was 
drawing closer about Frederick. His ruin seemed certain. 
One circumstance, the same one that Germany calculated on in 
1917, saved him. Elizabeth died in 1762 and the Russia of 
Peter III deserted her allies and sought reconciliation with 
Prussia. Austria, giving up the struggle, concluded a peace at 
Hubertsburg by which she abandoned Silesia to Frederick. A 
few days before, when she accepted the treaty of Paris, France 
had resigned herself to signing the peace that England wished, 
(1763). 

Thus, with England as with Prussia, France had lost the 
upper hand but she had been especially unfortunate on the sea. 
It had long ago been proved that in any conflict with the Eng- 
lish, the French could not hope for victory so long as their navy 
was incapable of holding its own against the British. By the 
terms of the treaty of Paris this lesson was paid for by the loss 
of almost the entire French colonial domain—Canada, the left 
bank of the Mississippi, Sénégal except Gorée, and India except 
the few settlements that she still possesses there. The price of 
her defeat was heavy, the more so in that it helped to lay the base 
of the British Empire. However, it was only the base. England 
would still have to protect the results of this great victory; she 
immediately saw the danger and reproached her government 
for not having laid France as low as Pitt had set out to do. 
Because, although the French public took the loss of its colonies 
lightly, it also began to feel that the domination of the sea by 
the English constituted an insufferable tyranny, a danger from 
which France must be freed. During the Seven Years’ War 
France had constructed some war ships by public subscription. 
After the treaty of Paris, Choiseul directed all his policy to- 
wards revenge upon those who were called the “tyrants of the 
sea.” The restoration of the French naval power, the consoli- 
dation of the pacte de famille, the acquisition of Corsica, an 
advance post in the Mediterranean, which neutralized the pres- 
ence of the English in Minorca—all these were his work. 


a i a I aT À IER 





THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 239 


For his vast projects he had need of funds and the Seven 
Years’ War had already been a severe drain. To obtain money, 
it was necessary to have parliaments to authorize taxes. To 
win over the parliaments whose conflict with the clergy was 
still going on, and whose tendencies were always Jansenist, 
Choiseul persuaded Louis XV to sacrifice the order of Jesuits 
to them. The condemnation of this order, which had numerous 
colleges in France and which was forbidden to teach, was at the 
same time a victory for the Encyclopedists, for the philosophers, 
and for the men of letters who were attacking religion and the 
Church. Choiseul calculated that he would flatter, in this way, 
not only the members of parliament, but a noisy section of 
public opinion. It was undoubtedly the popularity thereby ac- 
quired which permitted him to follow his national work, his 
reform of the army and the navy. But he did not disarm the 
opposition. That of the parliaments against the taxes began 
again and was particularly violent in Brittany where the States 
were attached to their ancient privileges and were sustained by 
the parliament of Rennes. The parliament of Paris took sides 
with their confrères of Rennes in favor of Chalotais against 
d’ Aiguillon, who was acting as governor, and there followed a 
whole series of incidents; “letters of royal command” and lits 
de justice which lasted from 1766 to 1771. Choiseul, who was 
considered, not without reason, as being favorable to the magis- 
trates, fell in the course of this struggle. Maupeou convinced 
the king that the opposition of the parliaments was becoming a 
danger to the government. At the same time, Louis XV was 
alarmed by the projects of Choiseul who, still with the idea of 
revenge, was pushing Spain into war with England in order to 
involve France again. The fall of Choiseul was another of 
the significant events of this reign. The day he was sent back 
to his estates, there were some manifestations in his honor. By 
a strange contradiction, the crowd was acclaiming the man of 
that Austrian alliance which they had detested, the man who 
had just given the dauphin, the future Louis XVI, Marie 
Antoinette of Austria as wife. 

The departure of Choiseul was followed by the coup d’état 


240 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


of Maupeou. We are too apt to overlook this event in the reign 
of Louis XV. The parliaments, whose powers had increased 
with time, had become an obstacle in the way of government. 
The opposition of the sovereign courts, and those of the prov- 
inces following the lead of the one in Paris, ended by becoming 
a political danger. ‘These courts had even gone so far as to pro- 
claim their unity and indivisibility. They thus practically as- 
sumed the power of the States General. They acted in concert, 
rejected edicts under the direction of the Paris parliament, and 
issued writs of arrest against the officers of the king. “This 
astonishing anarchy,” said Voltaire, “could not continue. The 
crown had to take back the authority or the parliaments would 
have prevailed.” It was as a matter of fact, a government 
raised against a government and one or the other had to suc- 
cumb. Ever since the time of the Fronde, the monarchy had 
had to reckon with this independent magistracy, its own crea- 
tion and almost as old as the monarchy itself, but which was 
little by little getting beyond its control. Louis XIV had solved 
the difficulty by the autocratic method and, thanks to his pres- 
tige had been successful. During his régime, the parliaments 
had been subjugated. Revived by the regency, they had grad- 
ually become bolder and their opposition, founded on respect 
for acquired rights, had become more injurious in proportion 
as the state and the administration had developed and had been 
confronted with the task of organizing and modernizing a France 
which had been reclaimed and constituted, piece by piece, out of 
the old chaos of feudal Europe. The ministers of the eighteenth 
century, including the unfortunate Calonne, continually com- 
plained over the difficulty of governing a country which had 
taken eight hundred years to form its territory. Towns and 
provinces had been united under the most varied conditions and 
as soon as there was talk of any change, simplification, or im- 
provement, the government was confronted by exceptions, fran- 
chises, or privileges stipulated by contract. At the end of the 
reign of Louis XV, it appeared that the parliaments, by oppos- 
ing all changes, and consequently all reforms, and all progress 
were making it impossible for the monarchy to govern, were 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 241 


forcing it into a rut and by a blind and selfish attachment to 
custom, were leading it to destruction. To satisfy the needs of 
the new era, it was necessary to break with much of the old. 
The resistance which the monarchy had always encountered in 
its political and administrative work, a resistance which had 
been feudal in form up to the time of Richelieu, now took a 
juridical and legal form all the more dangerous perhaps, be- 
cause, as it was not armed, it did not appear as open and brutal 
sedition. | 

Choiseul had tried to govern with the parliaments by giving 
them the Jesuits as a sop, by flattering their Jansenist opinions, 
and by choosing some of the ministers and controllers-general 
from among their number. This was already a worn-out policy. 
The only thing left was to resort to bolder methods. In 1771, 
Maupeou, charged with the task, suppressed the parliaments and 
the court of aides. In their place were instituted “superior 
councils.” The selling of offices was abolished and justice be- 
came free for all. This was one of the reforms most desired by 
the country. The suppression of the parliaments, a bold stroke 
of policy, permitted Maupeou to continue that rational or- 
ganization which for centuries had been undertaken by the 
monarchy. The way was open. What Bonaparte accomplished, 
when he became First Consul, thirty years later, could then have 
been carried out without the ruin of a revolution. From 1771 
to 1774 the administration of Terray, unjustly criticized by 
history but better understood in our own day, was beginning 
to correct the abuses. It first moderated, with the idea of later 
abolishing, the most vexatious of the taxes; it organized the 
famous “‘twentieths” which had raised so much opposition; and 
finally set itself to create just taxes, such as the tax on personal 
property, adopted later by the Constituent Assembly; in a word, 
it accomplished all that the parliaments had made impossible. 

If France could ever have revolutionized her government 
peacefully, it was not in 1789, but in 1774 at the death of Louis 
XV. The great administrative reforms which were then be- 
ginning, without shock and without violence, and through royal 
authority, were those which the revolutionary assemblies were 


242 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


to sketch out but which were to perish on account of the an- 
archy—the same ones which Napoleon was to revive and which 
were to succeed under his dictatorship. One of Napoleon’s col- 
laborators, the Consul Lebrun, will even be a former secretary 
of Maupeou. We see here another sort of continuity in French 
history which has been little understood. 

As soon as the reign of Louis XVI began, we shall see how 
all these promises were brought to naught through the recalling 
of the parliaments. Only then did revolution become inevitable. 

If there was discontent at the time when Louis XV died, 
it was not incurable; if there was agitation, it was only super- 
ficial. The old régime had needed reforms and it knew it; its 
motto had never been immobility. It had suffered many trans- 
formations since the days of Hugh Capet. It is easier to re- 
build society on an ideal plan than to adjust the institutions, the 
laws and the administration of a country to the needs of new 
generations. This is the secret of the success of Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, the supreme simplifier. But since the beneficent 
coup d’état of 1771, there had not been any organized opposi- 
tion. The government had stood its own ground and had not 
been afraid. Louis XV had never consented to call the States 
General, knowing that it would mean the abdication of the 
monarchy. It was blamed and criticized but it gave no signs of 
weakening. The “affairs” of the time, those of Calas, of the 
Chevalier de la Barre, of Sirven and of Lally-Tollendal, fa- 
mous trials which Voltaire pleaded in the name of justice and 
humanity, had no other political repercussions than to help dis- 
eredit the parliaments by whom the condemnations had been 
pronounced. Choiseul was dismissed and the parliaments 
broken up without there being any barricades as under the 
Fronde. As for the other complaints and accusations, they 
were those which few governments escape. The necessary re- 
ductions of the interest and the pensions, to which Terray pro- 
ceeded under Maupeou, were called bankruptcy. Because of a 
scarcity of grain and the speculations which were carried on, 
there arose the legend of the “pacte de famine” ; the favorites 
of the king, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, 


THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV 243 


were considered as public scandals. However, at two other 
epochs in French history royalty had survived more serious mo- 
ments and had several times been driven from Paris. Although 
some gloomy spirits prophesied catastrophies, the preparations 
and the desire for a veritable revolution were nowhere evident. 

It is always difficult to govern, but it was no more difficult 
for the monarchy at that moment than at another. If we ex- 
amine closely, we shall see that the situation was more complex 
without than within the realm. Louis XV had added Lorraine 
and Corsica to the kingdom. France had to preserve on the 
continent the advantages bequeathed to her by the seventeenth 
century ; she had to prevent upheavals in Germany, and keep her 
eye on the ambitions of Prussia. In the meantime, with the 
appearance of Russia, the Eastern question was assuming a new 
aspect. Turkey was threatened with dismemberment; Poland, 
the necessary ally of France, was threatened with ruin (the first 
partition was in 1772). Finally France had to wipe out the 
most serious effects of the treaty of Paris if she did not wish 
to renounce her colonies, her future on the sea, and the 
new kind of expansion which the great European peoples were 
seeking; if she did not wish, in other words, to abandon the 
oceans and the world to England. The maritime and colonial 
questions, the German question, the Eastern question—these 
were things which were to occupy the reign of Louis XVI, and, 
through a serious initial error—the recall of the parliaments— 
they were to provoke the drama of 1789. 


CHAPTER XV: 
LOUIS XVI AND THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 


We must consider not only the state of affairs in France at 
the moment when Louis XVI, a young man of twenty years, be- 
came king; we must consider the state of all Europe. It was 
sinister. The age was one of great conquests. Frederick of 
Prussia and the German Catherine of Russia, had already be- 
gun the partition of Poland and had drawn Austria into the 
deal. England, consolidating her conquests, thought only of her 
commercial interests and of guaranteeing her maritime su- 
premacy against all competitors. Such was the state of the 
world when the majority of Frenchmen were dreaming of the 
regeneration of humanity and of a golden age. 

The differences of doctrines and of schools did not prevent 
the French from having a common basis of aspirations and 1l- 
lusions. It is thus in every epoch and the young king would 
not have belonged to his age if he had not, to a certain extent, 
shared its ideas. One has often wondered what would have 
happened if the Duke of Burgundy, the pupil of Fénelon, had 
succeeded Louis XIV. Perhaps we have seen under Louis XVI. 
The vague conceptions expressed by the overgentle T'élémaque, 
which had appeared during the latter years of the seventeenth 
century, a mixture of tradition and reform, and which the 
Regency, with its aristocratic councils, had for a moment ap- 
plied—these conceptions had been preserved in the royal family. 
The conscientious dauphin, the son of Louis XV, was attached 
to them and Louis XVI had been bred in their atmosphere. 
“What indeed have the great men, the States of the provinces, 
the parliaments, done to deserve their fall?’ he wrote shortly 
after his coronation; thus condemning the evolution pursued 


sinced 1660. The least intelligible measures of his reign, at 
244 


LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 245 


first view, as for instance when the minister of war, Ségur, de- 
manded that the officers be nobles, arise from this predisposition. 
The public welfare, compassed through a monarchy acting as a 
paternal authority and respecting the old rights, liberties, fran- 
chises, and guaranties, the three orders and the great political 
bodies ; in short, a return to the old constitution of the monarchy 
such as it had been conceived—this was the idea of Louis XVI. 
France was following not so much principles as a tendency which 
seemed, at certain points, save on the religious question, to be 
confused with that of the philosophers, but which was really its 
opposite. or the philosophers, progress was to realize itself 
through the abolition of the past, through a uniform legislation 
—in a word, through an “enlightened despotism,” that of a 
Frederick or a Catherine or a Joseph IT, or of him of whom 
men like Choiseul or Maupeou, men the furthest removed from 
tradition, were dreaming. 

Under Louis XV the great question had been that of the 
parliaments. Choiseul had governed with them, Maupeou 
without them. The coup d’état of Maupeou—they even called 
it his revolution—was still fresh in 1774 and opinion remained 
divided. But the suppression of the parliaments had been an 
act of authority and Louis XVI, as the entire course of his 
reign will show, had neither the sense nor the taste for author- 
ity. The new king reversed the policy of his grandfather. “He 
found,” said Michelet, “that parliament had rights, after all, 
as well as royalty; that Louis XV, in meddling with them, had 
done a revolutionary, a dangerous thing. To reéstablish parlia- 
ment was to repair a breach that the king himself had made in 
the monarchical edifice. Turgot, in vain, strove and argued. 
Parliament returned (November, 1774) haughty, as it had left, 
quarrelsome, and always ready to oppose the most useful 
reforms.” | 

Thus, for the school of tradition, to suppress the parliament 
had been to change the monarchy, the independence of the 
judiciary having been one of the fundamental laws of the realm. 
But recourse to the States General was a change also. For 
more than a century and a half, the monarchy had ceased con- 


246 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


voking the States because they had generally been an occasion 
for disorder. The independence of the parliaments had been 
suppressed in its turn because the opposition of the parliamen- 
tarians was becoming dangerous, as at the time of the Fronde, 
and was paralyzing the government. The conflict which was 
not slow in coming to a head, between the crown and the par- 
liament, made a return to the States General inevitable. Al- 
though it was not evident at the time, it is now clear that the 
return to tradition, which was at the bottom the idea of Louis 
XVI, and which was combined in his mind with a program of 
reforms, though he had no means of realizing them, led the 
monarchy into the very difficulties from which it had endeavored 
to free itself under Louis XIV and Louis XV. 

These political troubles brought to a head the financial diff- 
culties born of the two seven-year wars, which could be resolved 
only if Maupeou’s method were continued and which were, more- 
over, to be increased by the tasks France was soon to encounter 
abroad, where hostile forces were growing stronger. If we add 
to this the state of public sentiment, fed on Utopias by the 
literature of the day, and the condition of a society which, from 
the lowest to the highest, wished vaguely to change things; if 
we add also the decline of the idea of authority—a weakness 
which extended even to the throne—we shall have some of the 
elements which led to the approaching Revolution. History 
should note that this Revolution came fifteen years after the 
recall of the parliaments and on the very day when the States 
General was convoked. 

“Louis XVI,” as Sainte-Beuve admirably says, “was only 
a man of good intentions, exposed upon a throne and feeling 
himself ill at ease there. By a succession of incomplete at- 
tempts, none of them followed up and always interrupted, he 
irritated the public fever and only ended by redoubling it.” 
“Because,” added Sainte-Beuve, “goodness, to be anything but 
a dream, must be organized and this organization must have a 
head, a minister, or a sovereign. This was entirely lacking 
during the fifteen years of trial and groping accorded to Louis 
XVI. The personages, even the best, by whom in his sincere 


LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 247 


love for his people, he at first surrounded himself, as auxil- 
iaries and collaborators were imbued with principles, doubtless 
even with vision, but also, to a great degree, with the prejudices 
of the century, the basis of which was an excessive confidence in 
human nature.” 

The time needed a “practical and prudent” king. Louis XVI 
had only good intentions and confused ideas. His first min- 
istry was what we should call a “great ministry.” It was com- 
posed of competent, hard-working men, men of integrity, and 
for the most part popular. The young king considered neither 
his own opinions nor preferences, since he even called Male- 
sherbes, the friend of Rousseau, famous for the protection he 
had accorded the philosophers when he had been in charge of 
the book trade, that is of the press. Maurepas, a statesman of 
wide experience; Miromesnil, keeper of the seals; Vergennes, 
France’s foremost diplomat; later, Saint-Germain for the min- 
istry of war; and finally and above all, Turgot, the illustrious 
Turgot, whose hands Voltaire kissed in tears: there was in such 
a personnel, much ground for hope. 

However, this ministry did not succeed. It is impossible to 
tell whether the reforms of Turgot would have saved France 
from revolution. Huis plans were partly practical and partly 
chimerical. They were inspired by the current ideas; his suc- 
cessors followed them and the revolutionary assemblies later 
took them up again. But in this very choice is shown the in- 
consistency of Louis XVI. Turgot had first become known as 
intendant and the intendants represented “progress from above,” 
in the districts which depended directly upon the crown. 
Their spirit was opposed to the spirit of the parliaments which 
the king was restoring. This, then, was the first contradiction 
in the new reign. 

In any event, time was lacking for Turgot to execute his pro- 
gram and although during the time that he was intendant at 
Limousin, he had obtained results which had made him famous, 
it was because he had remained thirteen years at his post. He 
was minister only two years. It was not only on account of the 
opposition with which he met and which was to be expected. 


248 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Turgot could not combat the abuses without wounding inter- 
ests or meeting with resistance; that of parliament in the first 
place, which had hardly been reinstated after its promises not 
to fall back into the old habit of opposition, before it again 
manifested its unaccountable spirit, at once reactionary and 
revolutionary. Turgot’s plan for regulating the finances was 
not new and history has recognized the ability of the controllers- 
general who preceded him. It was a question of economizing, 
of making a better redistribution of the taxes among the tax- 
payers, of suppressing exemptions and privileges; and these 
projects always raised the same tempests. On the other hand, 
Turgot was convinced, as Sully had been, that agriculture was 
the basis of national wealth, and he tried in various ways to 
favor it and at the same time to remedy the scourge of famine 
by allowing free trade in grains. But in this way he jostled 
not only special interests, but prejudices. This honest man was 
accused of having the grain sent out of the country, just as 
Louis XV had been accused of the pacte de famine. In his 
liberal program, Turgot, moreover, trod on other interests, those 
of the trade corporations; and this aroused the anger of the 
smaller merchants. His favoring of agriculture brought upon 
him the resentment of both industry and finance. “Turgot,” 
said Michelet, “had against him the lords and the shopkeepers.” 
We may add the bankers also, whose spokesman was Necker, a 
Genevan, a foreigner like Law, and who, like him, had that 
fatal and wonderful remedy; loans and an unlimited drawing 
upon credit. 

The animosity which Turgot had aroused against himself 
at court and in the country was what every minister, who at- 
tempts to reform the finances of his country, has to encounter. 
It undoubtedly contributed to his overthrow. But the true 
cause of his fall was of another sort. For Turgot to carry out 
his program, peace was necessary. He had remarked that the 
first cannon shot would be the signal of bankruptcy. But what 
was the reply of the ministry of foreign affairs? In 1776 an 
important event occurred: the English colonies of North Amer- 
ica revolted. It was the opportunity for France to efface the 





LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 249 


consequences of the treaty of Paris, to free herself and to free 
Europe from the “tyrants of the sea.” Could she afford to lose 
this opportunity? With regard to this the opinions which di- 
vided the French government still divide historians according to 
their point of view. The historians of finance judge that this 
war was unfortunate because it cost a billion and a half or two 
billions, and, as Turgot had prophesied, bankrupted France. 
The political historians hold that the result to be attained was 
worth more than the risk. This was the view of Vergennes 
and it was because the latter won the day that Turgot preferred 
to retire. 

We have now arrived at that juncture of external difficulties 
with the political and financial difficulties within, before which 
the monarchy was soon to succumb. We have seen a public 
sentiment developing which had in it something of the morbid. 
Michelet was right in underlining the importance of the mag- 
netism of Mesmer and the invention of balloons, both of which 
fortified the faith in human miracles, the miracles of progress. 
We have seen, on the other hand, that the government had lost 
its energy and that it had deliberately put itself in the way 
which led to the convoking of the States General—in other 
words, to making an explosion sure. The American war, from 
which it could not keep aloof without compromising the inter- 
ests of France and resigning itself to irreparable effacement 
(we have only to think what the British Empire would be to- 
day if it comprised also the United States) —the American war 
gave the shock which started the Revolution. 

Let us admit at once that Necker, called to the ministry of 
finances under cover of a man of straw because he was a for- 
eigner, found the means to finance the war against the English. 
But at what a price! By his combinations of loans, terribly 
burdensome for the treasury, he bequeathed to his successors 
a crushing debt of which they had to bear the unpopularity. 
Here again it is difficult to choose; if it is not fair to accuse 
Calonne and Brienne of the faults of Necker, is it any more so 
to reproach Necker, charged with finding the money for the 
war, for having procured it by easy methods which had the 


250 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


advantage of arousing no opposition, even though they were the 
means of finally wrecking French finances ¢ 

The enthusiasm of the public for the cause of American inde- 
pendence aided Necker in placing his loans and Vergennes in 
realizing his projects. America, in her rebellion against Eng- 
land, aroused the echo of the idea of liberty which the eighteenth 
century had spread abroad. That “good fellow, Franklin,” at 
bottom a rather sophisticated good fellow, who came to Paris to 
plead for his country, knew how to flatter the sentiments then 
fashionable and was received as a character out of Jean-Jac- 
ques Rousseau. This enthusiasm was realized in the departure, 
to which the government closed its eyes, of Lafayette and his 
volunteers. A little later France sent to America, besides sev- 
eral subsidies, some regular troops under Rochambeau. There 
is not a doubt but that, without this aid, the insurgent Amer- 
icans would have been crushed. 

However, the experience of the Seven Years’ War had not 
been lost. Vergennes knew that to strive advantageously 
against England, France must have her hands free on the con- 
tinent. À partisan of the Austrian alliance, he refused to be 
its tool and to turn it from its true object, which was to pre- 
serve in Germany the equilibrium against Prussia, which had 
been created by the treaty of Westphalia. Emperor Joseph IT, 
that brilliant and restless spirit, who was jealous of Frederick’s 
laurels, believed that the war between France and England 
would enkindle a new European war favorable to his interests. 
Vergennes hastened to disillusion him; Austria was not to be- 
come, like Prussia, a cause for disorder in Germany at the 
expense of France. Joseph IT at the death of the Elector of 
Bavaria, having wished to seize for himself the states of the 
latter, France intervened in the name of her right of guaranty 
over the Germanic Empire and by the convention of Teschen 
(1779), imposed her mediation on Austria and Prussia, both 
ready to take up arms. She did this in the traditional spirit of 
French policy with regard to Germany, without breaking the 
Austrian alliance and at the same time without allying herself 
with Prussia. Louis XVI and Vergennes did not allow them- 





LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 251 


selves to be turned aside from the war on the sea, by one on land. 
They had long ago learned that England could be vitally injured 
only by means of the sea. The peace thus preserved in Europe 
had another advantage; not only had England no allies but 
Spain and Holland, menaced by her greed, and weary of her 
naval tyranny, ranged themselves on the side of France, while 
others, at the instigation of Russia, formed a league of neutrals, 
an armed league, determined to impose upon England the 
freedom of the seas. . 

These measures, the result of a wise policy, permitted the 
expiring monarchy to take its revenge for the treaty of Paris. 
The War of American Independence had not been merely an 
episode in the rivalry between England and France. England 
gave up the conquest of the American colonies (who signed the 
treaty, moreover, without waiting for the French) the day when 
she renounced the idea of conquering France on the sea. The 
French fleet had not been reconstructed and fortified for naught. 
The money it had cost was not spent in vain. If a project of 
landing on English soil failed, as that of Napoleon was to fail, 
everywhere, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, the French 
squadrons had held the English in check and the Baill de 
Suffren showed himself one of the greatest sailors of France. 
England was no longer undisputed mistress of the seas. She 
had coveted the Dutch and Spanish colonies as recompense for 
the loss of America; she had to relinquish them and, although 
she kept Gibraltar, she returned Minorca to Spain. As for 
France, by the treaty of Versailles (1783), she freed Dunkirk 
from the yoke under which it was left by the treaty of Utrecht 
and she regained Sénégal without which her African empire 
would not exist to-day. Her prestige in the Far East was re- 
stored, and permitted her to penetrate Annam and to make the 
beginnings of that establishment in Indo-China by which she 
was later to compensate herself for the loss of India. It was 
a great lesson which was not to be forgotten; she had lost her 
colonies through weakness on the sea; it was through naval 
strength that she began to repair that loss. 

The defect of the treaty of Versailles was that it brought 


252 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


a sort of peace without conquerors or conquered. It proved that 
the French were capable of holding their own against England. 
It settled nothing. The compromise of 1783 was but a feeble 
thing. The equilibrium might be upset at any time by a naval 
effort on the part of either country and it was what England 
feared and prepared for. Vergennes, moderate and prudent, 
wished to consolidate what had been gained. The rivalry be- 
tween France and England seemed to him a misfortune and he 
claimed that incompatibilities between the nations were only 
prejudices. In 1786, by-a treaty of commerce which was later 
to be one of the grievances of the States General against the 
monarchy (it was accused of having flooded France with Eng- 
lish merchandise), the government of Louis XVI wished to 
reconcile the two countries, unite them and bring them into 
closer association through such exchanges and through a com- 
mon participation in a prosperity which was increasing daily 
on either side of the Channel. In all matters that presented 
themselves, up until the Revolution (in Holland, for instance, 
where the republicans, the friends of France, were overturned 
by the Orange party at the instigation of England and Prussia) 
France avoided everything that could lead to hostilities. She 
let things take their own course without interference. She was 
deliberately ‘“conciliating and pacific.” However, England 
watched this progress with jealousy. She would not agree to 
sharing the sea with France and the more her industries and 
her population developed, the more she feared French compe- 
tition. The idea gained way among the English that the white 
peace of 1783 had demonstrated the necessity of arresting the 
maritime regeneration of France. The rivalry, nearly a cen- 
tury old, and to which Vergennes had hoped to put an end, was 
soon to break out with new violence and this time the English 
would be determined to carry the struggle through to the bitter 
end. We can therefore understand that the French Revolution 
should have been for England what the American Revolution 
had been for France—an element in their policy, an opportu- 
nity, a means. 

Louis XVI had many reasons for wishing to preserve peace. 





LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 253 


First of all, only too happy to have effaced the unfortunate re- 
sults of the Seven Years’ War, he wished to stop there and not 
compromise what had been gained. He imagined that France 
would be grateful to him. Moreover, the state of Europe was 
not favorable. The Eastern question which had arisen with 
the progress of Russia, placed in a precarious position two 
powers friendly to France—the Polish state, her political ally, 
and the Ottoman Empire where her material and moral inter- 
ests, an accumulation of two hundred and fifty years, were not 
inconsiderable. To protect at one and the same time the integ- 
rity of Turkey and the independence of Poland, already weak- 
ened by a first partition; to make use of the Austrian alliance 
to prevent the emperor from succumbing to the temptations of 
Catherine of Russia, who was offering Vienna and Berlin their 
share in the spoils of Turkey and Poland; in short, to protect 
Europe from an upheaval that would have thrown France from 
the lofty and sure eminence she had held under Richelieu and 
Louis XIV, such were the cares which beset the French mon- 
archy. We.can understand with what relief the other mon- 
archies later heard of her fall, since it was she who had done 
police duty for the continent, maintained order, and prevented 
depredations by the great powers. 

Another circumstance imposed prudence upon the govern- 
ment. ‘The question of money, considerably aggravated by the 
expenses of the American war, was becoming as great a pre- 
occupation with the public as with the government. The com- 
bination and interrelation of all these events explain how the 
Revolution was brought about. 

From the examples which we have under our eyes, from the 
experience of the war and the years which followed it, where a 
thousand things of the past were relived, we can to-day under- 
stand how a bad financial situation may accompany economic 
prosperity. All witnesses agree that there was great pros- 
perity in the reign of Louis XVI. Business had never been 
more flourishing nor the bourgeoisie so rich. There was an 
abundance of money in the country. The deficit, great as it 
was, could be met by a better distribution of taxes. Unfortu- 


254 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


nately, the reform ministers constantly encountered the old re- 
sistance, not only that of the privileged classes but of all the 
taxpayers whose official protector was the parliament. The 
prodigious popularity of Necker arose from the fact that he 
resorted not to taxes but to loans. Skillful at wrapping his pills 
in gold foil and presenting the budget, his famous Account 
Rendered, under the most favorable but also the falsest light, he 
had no difficulty, by disguising the truth, in attracting large 
capital. Two consequences followed; the bondholders became 
very numerous and consequently national bankruptcy would 
thereafter strike and displease a great number of people; on 
the other hand, Necker, having given the impression that new 
taxes were not necessary, acquired the favor of all the tax- 
payers, notably the clergy, to whose purse it was the eustom to 
turn in case of need. But in this manner he made the French 
of all classes still more rebellious against taxation. 

Necker had fallen in 1781, two years before the end of the 
war, through a question of internal politics. To borrow was 
not enough. It was necessary to find resources through finan- 
cial reforms. And none was possible so long as the parliaments 
were opposed to it. That is why Necker had undertaken to 
create in all the provinces, no matter what their régime or 
rights, provincial assemblies to whom would be transferred in 
part the powers of the parliaments and intendants. As soon 
as it was understood that Necker wished “to keep the parlia- 
ments to the honorable and tranquil functions of the magistracy 
and take away the great objects of administration,” he had the 
parliaments against him. Necker arrived by detour at the 
position of Maupeou. Whatever repugnance Louis XVI may 
have had to parting with Necker, after having lost Turgot, he 
was easily convinced by Maurepas of the danger of this new con- 
flict, as well as of the inconsistency involved in humiliating or 
again breaking up the parliaments after having restored them. 
It was extremely difficult to find a way out of these contradic- 
tions and Louis XVI began to find himself a slave to his prin- 
ciples. He was turning in a vicious circle. In the meantime, 
under his artifices, Necker had hidden some enormous gaps. 





LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 255 


His successor, Joly de Fleury, revealed the truth; immediately 
the deficit was imputed to him. He fell in his turn together 
with the Financial Council which he had established for the 
purpose of straightening out the accounts. After him the king 
judged that a professional administrator, an honest man, would 
best fulfill the task. Lefévre d’Ormesson employed definite and 
open measures which had no other effect than to strike a blow 
at national credit and cause a panic. Within two years, two 
ministers had tried and failed. Undeterred by their experience, 
a clever man then presented himself for the office—the famous 
Calonne. 

Calonne has remained famous because he has been regarded 
as the grave digger of the ancien régime. With his name has 
been associated the famous saying of Beaumarchais, of which 
the Figaro made so much. “The position called for a mathe- 
matician, a dancer got it.” At the present time history has very 
nearly rehabilitated the character of Calonne. In any case, his 
intentions have been better understood. He was an adroit man 
and seductive, who relied upon the resources of his own wit to 
solve the most difficult situations. In the face of an empty 
treasury, he assumed an optimism which he did not feel. Know- 
ing human nature, he thought that to avoid running counter to 
the same oppositions as his predecessors, it was necessary to 
adopt an economy that should be agreeable and not nagging; a 
few generous acts, judiciously carried out and pleasing to cer- 
tain influential persons, would suppress the outcries and per- 
mit the execution of serious reforms. At the same time, by 
means of a few millions, he would give the impression of 
wealth and restore credit. A delay could thus be obtained and 
the resources of France were sufficiently great to free the state 
from embarrassment in a few years. This is the secret of what 
history has called the prodigalities of Calonne; they arose from 
a method very like that of Necker. It has been established, 
moreover, that the great extravagance of the court has been 
exaggerated simply because it was so apparent, but that, all 
told, the “profusions” of Calonne, the expenses which he al- 
lowed the queen and the brothers of the king, did not exceed 


256 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


what Turgot himself had sanctioned. “It is going beyond all 
limits,” writes one of the most recent and most impartial investi- 
gators of French financial history, “to see in his favors to the 
people of the court the principal cause of the ruin of French 
finances.” In short, Calonne, in order to maintain his position, 
and to gain time, threw dust in the eyes of the people gener- 
ally, and an occasional sop to the malcontents. 

But like all the others, he experienced the hostility of the 
parliaments whose attitude before any attempt at financial 
restoration was entirely negative. Ardent in preaching the 
necessity for economy, they continued on principle to refuse 
taxes, loans, or reforms. There lay the great obstacle to every- 
thing. We may then repeat with even more emphasis what we 
have already said: In ressucitating the parliaments, Louis XVI 
had prevented a reform of the state which could have been made 
without disorder only by the government’s acting on its own 
authority. Thus, through his adherence to the ideas of his an- 
cestor, the Duke of Burgundy, Louis XVI provoked the Revo- 
lution. 

Indeed, if under Louis XV, Choiseul had flattered the par- 
liaments and Maupeou had dissolved them, it was in both eases 
that they might not be obliged in case of an impasse between the 
crown and the independent bodies, to have recourse to the arbi- 
tration of the States General. Either the crown had to stand 
by the coup d’état of 1771 or depend for support upon national 
representation. Louis XVI, hostile to the coup d’état, was led 
to adopt the second alternative, which for the last twenty-five 
years had been inevitable. Calonne correctly interpreted the 
idea of the king when, after two years of conflict with the par- 
liaments, he suggested to him to call an assembly of the nobles, 
one of the mechanisms of the constitutional and aristocratic 
monarchy which Fénelon had already conceived. 

From this moment (February, 1787) the Revolution was on 
the way. What did Calonne bring to the notables? A mixture 
of the ideas of Necker and Turgot, ideas that were being vaguely 
agitated pretty much everywhere, the program which we shall 
find the Constitutent Assembly adopting in great part. Noth- 


a 


LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 257 


ing would be more mistaken than to regard Calonne as a re- 
actionary. Jt was as a reformer that he addressed the repre- 
sentatives of the three orders, who had been chosen from among 
the most important or popular personalities. La Fayette was 
among them as well as some great nobles, celebrated for their 
“philanthropy” and their devotion to the new ideas. Mirabeau 
and Talleyrand, at the head of their groups, were making their 
débuts. Calonne hoped to have the support of this assembly to 
obtain the reforms that parliament was refusing. Imbued with 
the optimism of his time, increased by that of his own nature, 
he thought that by invoking the public welfare he could obtain 
what he wanted—a new system of taxation, voted by the provin- 
cial assemblies with the suppression of the “unjust exemptions.” 
That is, Calonne appealed to the generosity of the privileged 
classes and to the equalitarian aspirations of the Third Estate. 
With astounding naiveté, in order the better to work upon their 
minds, he unveiled the distressing state of the treasury. The 
nobles, instead of opening their purses, profited by this dis- 
closure to charge him with every crime. The accusations of 
incapacity and extravagance which burden his memory, date 
from this time. He became the scapegoat for the collective 
eauses of French bankruptcy. The scandal was such that the 
king had to ask for his resignation. This first assembly of 
picked members had at its very beginning overturned a minister 
hated by the parliaments. 

It did nothing else. Loménie de Brienne, a prelate, a friend 
of Choiseul and the philosophers and said to be an atheist, suc- 
ceeded Calonne and took up his projects. He obtained nothing 
more than his predecessor had from the nobles who were de- 
termined above everything not to pay. In order to postpone the 
day of reckoning, they had recourse to the idea that a great re- 
form of the taxes should be approved by the States General or 
as La Fayette said, “better than that,” by a national assembly. 
And this is exactly where they were heading. 

The end of the year 1787 was particularly unfortunate for 
the monarchy in that it found Louis XVI in contradiction with 
himself. He was obliged to enter into open conflict with the 





258 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


parliaments which he had reéstablished. They refused to regis- 
ter the edicts which created new taxes and to recognize the new 
provincial assemblies; at all points the sovereign courts showed 
themselves intractable. They also invoked those fundamental 
laws, those ancient traditions of the realm in virtue of which 
the king had restored them—respect for ancient provincial cus- 
toms, the independence and permanent tenure of the magistrates 
and the voting of subsidies by the States General. Before this 
stubborn resistance it was necessary to have recourse to the liés 
de justice, the exiling of the parliaments and the arrest of their 
members. The government was reduced to the methods of the 
reign of Louis XV without having the power to apply them so 
energetically; and this time public opinion was hostile. The 
resistance of parliament, henceforth bound up with the convoca- 
tion of the States General, was popular. The idea of consulting 
the nation was promulgated by pamphlets and was associated 
with the idea of liberty. The philosophic school of enlightened 
despotism which had sustained Choiseul and Maupeou had 
disappeared ; a liberalism, made popular by the literature of the 
day and strengthened by the example of America, replaced it. 
Brienne, an “impotent Maupeou,” or rather an unconscious 
one, was not fortunate in his struggle against the parliamen- 
tarians. They stood on their tradition. He wished to go 
further back and invented a plenary court, “established” he 
claimed on the model of that of the first Capetians, if not of 
Charlemagne. By this, parliament, which insisted so strongly 
on its own tradition, would be reduced to the modest functions 
which it had in the beginning. In short, Brienne was beating 
the magistrates at their own game. His system, artificial as it 
was, had but one result. What did it mean? The king in his 
councils, the people in their States; no intermediary powers, 
a direct appeal to the nation. Thus Brienne, although he 
intended only to promise it for a later day, actually was bring- 
ing about the convoking of the States General. In appealing to 
tradition, the government and the parliaments, equally, hastened 
the hour of opening the dikes. They both killed themselves at 
the same game. The royal family was torn asunder by it; the 


LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 259 


Duke of Orléans entered the opposition and was exiled to Vil- 
lers-Cotterets for having publicly accused Louis XVI of having 
acted illegally the day of the enforced registration of the new 
edicts. 

The government became impossible because it had multiplied 
the obstacles in its own path and set a snare before every step 
it took, at a moment when there was no good will anywhere. 
At bottom, the greatest subject of discontent and anxiety was 
the question of money. The privileged classes feared the taxes; 
an assembly of the clergy, called by Brienne, who hoped for a 
subsidy from them, refused blankly and declared on a very 
convenient pretext that the French people were not taxable at 
will. On the other hand, the numerous creditors of the state 
and the holders of state obligations became alarmed. No one 
wished to pay and the lenders were clamoring for their money. 
Every one counted on the States General either to free them 
from taxation or to guarantee the payment of the public debt. 
They were like so many Simple Simons, impatient to throw 
themselves into the water for fear of getting wet in the rain. 
In the meantime the existing taxes were not coming in on ac- 
count of the new mechanism of the provincial assemblies which 
did not yet function well. The resources of the treasury were 
exhausted because, as all confidence had been shaken, not to say 
destroyed, no one was subscribing to the loans and the bankers 
refused any advances. The government still struggled on dur- 
ing several months, against the winds and waves, never 
abandoning the reforms, persisting in showing itself more liberal 
than parliament and forcing the latter to recognize the civil 
status of the Protestants. At best, it would have taken five 
years of tranquillity to establish even moderate order in the 
finances. It was too late to obtain this respite. The parlia- 
ments had talked louder than any one else about the States 
General, about individual liberty, about the abolition of the 
lettres de cachet. Public opinion took the part of the parlia- 
ments whose resistance was paralyzing the state and consigning 
it to bankruptcy by refusing the taxes. Thus the Revolution 
began as the Fronde had done, only with the difference that this 


260 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


time the provinces gave the signal for the movement, Paris 
having as yet seen only a few manifestations without results. 

In Brittany, in Dauphiné, in Béarn, the rigorous measures 
adopted against the refractory parliaments brought about 
serious agitation. In those provinces which had been added 
more or less lately to the realm, just as in the mind of the king 
himself, there was a strange mixture of feeling, a mixture of 
new ideas with old, an attachment to the old franchises which 
had been limited or threatened, and at the same time an en- 
thusiasm for the liberal principles. The extreme complexity 
of the situation both politically and morally can be felt only if 
we observe that at Rennes, for example, the nobility took the 
part of their parliament, that the Breton gentlemen sent to 
Paris to protest to the king used such insolent language that 
they were put in the Bastille where they celebrated, amid the 
applause of the people of Paris, the day of Briennes’ downfall. 
In Dauphiné the nobility counted for little and was confounded 
with the bourgeoisie. There, all classes united for the defense 
of the parliament of Dauphiné. An assembly of the three 
orders was formed at the same time and, the government having 
forbidden it Grenoble, it sat at Vizille whence was issued, on 
July twenty-first, a declaration which resounded throughout 
France. It was a clear, complete program of which Judge 
Mounier was the author; a striking résumé of the ideas which 
had been floating about for the last ten years and which the min- 
isters themselves had launched—no reforms; no subsidies with- 
out the previous vote of the States General; the election of all 
deputies; double representation for the Third Estate; and 
finally the vote by head and not by orders; that is to say, the 
possibility for the Third Estate to have a majority over the 
other two. This program spread over France and had an 
enormous success. The old cask of the States General, put in 
its place of honor by the amateurs of tradition, was to be re- 
filled with new wine. <A curious thing happened which is not 
surprising after what we have already seen; some lagging re- 
cruits were counting on the States General in order to play 
politics and to defend their own interests, as happened in the 


LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 261 


parliaments of 1614. Certain cahiers show that the nobility 
hoped to throw the weight of the taxes upon the clergy and vice 
versa. There was instead to be a great housecleaning, in the 
course of which would disappear privileges, exemptions, old 
provincial franchises, parliaments themselves, government, and 
monarchy—everything that they had hoped, through the return 
to the old institution, to preserve and rejuvenate. 

When the proclamation of Vizille was launched, Brienne had 
already, on July fifth, announced a meeting of the States Gen- 
eral, but did not fix the date. The assembly of the clergy, by 
refusing all financial aid, had struck the knell of this bishop- 
minister. In all this agitation, the financial questions were 
closely bound up with the political. The treasury was empty 
and reduced to the last extremities. They were even on the 
point of suspending interest payments on their loans. It was 
becoming difficult to pay the public officials. Finally, to soften 
the blow, Brienne, on the eighth of August, definitely convoked 
the States General for May first, 1789. On the sixteenth he an- 
nounced that the state was at the end of its resources and, for 
this semi-bankruptcy, he gave the reason which still remains the 
true one: “Public confidence had been destroyed by the very 
ones who should have conspired to preserve it; the public loans 
had been refused as though they had not been necessary.” Then 
amid the general hue and cry, greater even than that which 
assailed Calonne, Brienne fell. 

Thus the financial wound from which the old régime had 
suffered so long had finally become fatal. And the root of the 
evil lay in the liberties, franchises, and immunities—the historic 
inheritance of the difficult French constitution—in guaranties 
which rendered the individual or the special group stronger and 
the state weaker. We no longer have the idea of fiscal exemp- 
tions with regard to estates or towns; of sovereign courts whose 
magistrates, having bought their charges, are independent of the 
government and systematically favor the cause of the taxpayers ; 
of privileged or recently acquired provinces who enjoy a finan- 
cial autonomy. At that time one-quarter of all France lived 
under a different régime from the rest. The clergy, equally in- 


262 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


dependent, had its budget, its debt, its charges, but with respect 
to the state it could accord or refuse at will its “free gift.” 
Under the combined weight of these opposing privileges, the 
finances of the state succumbed and with them the old régime, 
because it had abandoned the policy which Richelieu, Louis 
XIV, and Louis XV had laid down for it; because it had re- 
linquished its own power to the powers which it should have 
dominated and disciplined. And what happened afterwards? 
Whatever may have been the fiscal work of the Revolution, 
whatever simplifications, whatever unity it may have effected in 
the state, it succeeded no better than the monarchy because at 
the same time it provoked disorders that it could not suppress. 
Furthermore, it immediately fell into an irremediable bank- 
ruptey, that of the assignats. Financial order was not to be 
restored again until the dictatorship of Napoleon. Whence we 
come to this paradoxical conclusion—paradoxical in appearance 
only—that at the very moment when it was being accused of 
despotism, the monarchy’s greatest need was authority. 

Since the monarchy perished through the question of money, 
it is well to investigate as to whether this question was in- 
soluble. Two facts will show; the deficit, according to Brienne’s 
report was 160 million on an expenditure of half a billion. 
France at that time had a population of about 25 million; it 
was then a matter of six or seven francs a head. On the other 
hand the interest on the loans absorbed about half of the re- 
ceipts. Such a proportion seemed excessive and ruinous until 
the day when France’s postwar budgets showed a far greater 
disproportion. We cannot therefore say that her situation was 
desperate. It was without issue only, we repeat, through the 
incapacity of the state to create for itself sufficient resources and 
to collect taxes calculated on the basis of its needs. In this 
respect the Revolution will be no more fortunate and the liberty 
which it strove to create will succeed no better than the liberties 
offered by Louis XVI. As for the expenses of the royal family, 
and of the court; as for the favors and pensions of which so 
much has been said, aside from the fact that many of them were 
rewards for services rendered to the state and constituted re- 


LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 263 


tiring allowances, nothing more just can be said than what 
Marion says in his Financial History of France: “There does 
not exist and there cannot exist any statistics of this sort of 
expense or of resources exhausted, any more than there can exist, 
in times much nearer our own, statistics of economies which 
were not effected, of sinecures, established and maintained, of 
useless expenses Imposed by parliamentary influences and by 
the obligation of representatives to their constituents.” 

However, it was necessary to pull through until the convoca- 
tion of the States, on which every one set his hopes. Louis XVI 
recalled the magician, the prestidigitator, Necker, the man 
through whom credit was restored. This time Necker had all 
the powers of a minister and he set himself to the work full of 
confidence in his own talents. He loaned two million of his 
personal fortune to the treasury, obtained advances from the 
bankers and paid everything with an open hand. But Necker’s 
great fault, especially at such a time, was that he saw everything 
from the financial and not from the political point of view. He 
did not understand what was going on and was as astonished 
as many others at the Revolution. His excuse lies in a misun- 
derstanding which was well-nigh general. This was evident 
when parliament, with its usual reactionary spirit, decided that 
the States should be held in the same manner as those of 1614. 
At bottom, every one counted on these States to defend his own 
interests as upon those of former centuries. The crown itself 
thought that, as formerly, the orders, classes, and independent 
bodies would clash and that it would be the arbitrator of this 
struggle. But that time was past. The claim of the Third 
Estate, that of the right to vote by head, formulated at Vizille, 
became irresistible. For having resisted it, parliament lost its 
popularity in a day. Necker, like Calonne, having had the idea 
of consulting the notables, who in 1787 had demanded the 
States General in order to avoid a sacrifice of money, became 
hostile the moment these States no longer responded to their 
calculations, and diminished the power of the first two orders 
to the profit of the third. Notables and parliaments alike then 
regretted having called so loudly for national representation. 


264: HISTORY OF FRANCE 


It was too late. But in a France which a little while ago had 
been unanimous, a new schism was soon to appear. 

There was not only misunderstanding. Much has been said, 
even admiringly, of the cahiers which, according to the cus- 
tom of the day, were prepared in every district and which 
summed up’ the wishes of the nation. In reality they were 
either very contradictory or very vague. They raised every 
problem and solved none. It is true that we find in them no 
word uttered against the monarchy and, so far as they were con- 
cerned, France appeared to be entirely royalist. But what they 
demanded was equivalent to an overturning of government and 
society. They manifested a keen attachment to the old liberties 
and local privileges together with the desire to unify the laws. 
Above all, and there the three orders are in agreement, they 
strongly advocated the principle, very old and very natural, that 
taxes ought to be agreed to and their use controlled by those 
who pay them. Care for the finances, hatred of a deficit and 
of bankruptey—admirable sentiments in themselves—were ac- 
companied by a pitiless criticism of the existing taxes. We find 
the privileged classes holding the more tenaciously to their 
exemptions in that the latter protected them against the taille, 
that is from the fiscal inventory. No more personal taxes, no 
more failles; on that point there was perfect accord. This re- 
form was to be realized—a legitimate and an excellent one. For 
more than a century, up to our own day, the French will be 
delivered from the tax on their incomes; secrecy with regard 
to their private affairs, a thing to which they are strongly at- 
tached, will be respected. But this desire is nothing new; we 
recognize in it the spirit of ancient France in its long struggle 
against taxation. What above all else the cahiers show is the 
desire not to pay, or to pay as little as possible. The kind of 
taxation which they demanded was the lightest possible, since 
common sense told them that there must be some. But they 
would have no other. Indirect taxes were proscribed, those on 
beverages as well as those on salt. In other words, the state 
was to have increased expenses and decreased resources. Fur- 
thermore, the revolutionary governments, slaves of demagogy, 


LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 265 


were to be rapidly led into financial difficulties and expedients 
worse than those from which they had just emerged. Jn addi- 
tion, once anarchy had declared itself, the taxpayers would im- 
mediately interpret the wishes of the cahiers, would go on 
strike, and would not pay anything. Carnot said later, “Every 
agitation of the people, whatever may be the apparent or im- 
mediate causes, has at bottom only one end, that of ridding 
themselves of the burden of taxation.” 

The deputies who on May 5, 1789, came together at Ver- 
sailles, did not suspect the difficulties in store for them. Soon 
the responsibilities of administration would devolve upon the 
Third Estate and they were to enter upon a determined strug- 
gle to wrest the government from the monarchy. In following 
the history of this time, as it was truly enacted, we shall see 
the government pass into new hands without the nature of the 
task’s having changed. 

The language of the times which was especially declamatory, 
and the famous sayings, often prepared in advance, have lent to 
these events an heroic and legendary character. As a matter of 
fact, they surprised every one and no one desired what really 
happened. The government, that is Necker, meant to obtain 
from the deputies only the means for contracting his loans and 
reéstablishing the finances. He had no political plans or ideas. 
He allowed things to drift. The nobility were immediately of- 
fended because the tactics of the old States General had been 
discarded at the beginning; the clergy had gone over to the 
bourgeoisie, and the Third Estate, having held out for the vote 
by heads, had declared that it was no longer a question of a 
States General but of a national assembly where the three orders 
would deliberate in common. The king and the government 
were utterly disconcerted by this new state of affairs, in spite 
of the fact that everything had been tending in this direction. 
As for the deputies of the Third Estate and of the clergy, they 
never suspected that they would be carried so far and then 
overtaken and left behind by the popular forces already in 
motion. No one seemed even to have noticed the frequent 
bloody riots which had taken place in Paris in the winter of 


266 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


1788-89 and which the famine, or fear of it, had provoked; nor 
the violent incidents which in many places had accompanied 
the electoral campaign. In any case the government had shown 
the greatest lack of prudence in convoking the States at Ver- 
sailles, within a stone’s throw of that great capital where riot 
was rife. 

The Third Estate took two months to carry off its first vic- 
tory, the transformation of the States General into a National 
Assembly. It feared that it might be dissolved; on the twen- 
tieth of April, by the oath of the Jeu de Paume, six hundred 
deputies swore that they would not adjourn before having 
“established the constitution of the realm.” This was a cruel 
embarrassment for the government. It had troops and could 
dissolve the Assembly, certainly. But Necker contended that 
the deputies had been convoked in order to obtain money and 
that things would be worse off than before. The Assembly was 
not dissolved. The government (according to the regulation of 
June twenty-third) recognized that the taxes and loans had to 
be voted, admitted the States to participation in the legislative 
reforms, but would not yield on the division of the three orders. 
That is, it did not admit the transformation of the States Gen- 
eral into a National Assembly, a transformation for which the 
Third Estate, the majority of the clergy, and some members of 
the nobility had already pronounced themselves. All the depu- 
ties decided to remain in session and when the Marquis Dreux- 
Brézé came to remind them that the three orders were to sit 
separately, Mirabeau replied in that famous saying in which 
he set the will of the people in opposition to that of the king: 
“We will leave only by force.” A clever challenge; Mirabeau 
well knew that the government, strangled by the need of money, 
prisoner of its own principles, watched by an hostile parlia- 
ment, could not dissolve the States General. The Third Estate 
had won. It was joined by the clergy as a whole. A large part — 
of the nobility went over to it with the Duke of Orléans, and 
the rest followed less by conviction than by prudence. At Paris, 
even at Versailles, the noise of uprising was already beginning 
to be heard. Mounier and Mirabeau were anxious and the 





LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 267 


government did what any government would have done in its 
place; it took measures to preserve order. Immediately the 
rumor was started that the Assembly was going to be dissolved ; 
agitation in Paris grew and increased the more when Necker, 
who disapproved of the presence of the troops, left the ministry 
(July 11). On the twelfth of April it was learned that the 
king had chosen as ministers Breteuil and those who were 
already styled men of the court party, or the queen’s party. It 
was but a pretense at a coup d’état and only served to hasten 
the capitulation which was sure to come. 

The insurrection which thereupon broke out in Paris, and 
which was fully successful, was not what the moderate spirits, 
the bourgeois who formed the majority of the Assembly and 
who had conducted the movement for reform in the provinces, 
had dreamed. It was not the more respectable part of the 
population, not even the electors who had seized the guns and 
cannon at the Hôtel des Invalides, who, on July fourteenth, took 
the Bastille, massacred its governor, De Launay, and paraded 
his head through the streets together with that of Flesselles, the 
provost of the merchants. Ordinarily the French bourgeoisie 
has little taste for disorders of this kind and it must be con- 
fessed that at the first news which they had of it, the Assembly 
of Versailles was filled with consternation. It was only after- 
wards that the taking of the Bastille became a glorious and 
symbolic event. But there is little doubt that this insurrection, 
which let loose dangerous passions, had at least been encouraged 
by those who were already known as “capitalists,” by men who 
at bottom stood especially for order which was represented for 
them by the regular payment of interest and for whom the de- 
parture of Necker was synonymous with bankruptcy. Necker 
was recalled since his name was a fetish with the rentiers; but 
already the wherewithal to pay them was disappearing. 

The taking of the Bastille was indeed a symbol. It not only 
resounded in Konigsberg where Kant even gave up his after- 
noon promenade because of it. In France it was the beginning 
of an anarchy which was all ready to break loose. The disavowal 
of measures taken to preserve order, the command forbidding 


268 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the troops to fire on the crowd, the fraternizing of certain 
troops (the French guards) with the people, the absence of all 
repression after the uprising had their necessary consequences 
and prolonged results. After the fourteenth of July, a vast in- 
surrection broke out in France. Against whom? Against the 
old object of general hatred, the treasury, the taxation. In 
the towns, the crowds demolished the offices of the tax collec- 
tors, burned the registers, and maltreated the commissioners— 
a sure means of getting rid of taxes. There was a Jacquerie in 
the country districts and it was no new phenomenon. Thus 
were translated the demands so reasonably expressed in the 
cahiers. The ambassador of the Venetian Republic, observing 
affairs with a keen eye, wrote, “A horrible anarchy is the 
first result of the regeneration that it was desired to give 
France. . . . There are no longer executive power, laws, magis- 
trates, or police.” 

This explosion, called by Taine the “spontaneous anarchy,” 
did not escape the Assembly. They were terrified by it, and 
dealt with the crowd as the king had dealt with them—by 
impulse and without reflection. A report concerning brig- 
andage, ending in the same terms as had the Venetian ambassa- 
dor’s, spread alarm. Something had to be done to calm the 
people for whom the promise of just and regularly voted taxes 
was a meager satisfaction. On the fourth of August, at an 
evening session, a deputy of the nobles, the Viscomte de Noail- 
les, proposed to suppress the feudal rights. What remained 
of these rights were naturally much hated. For centuries 
tenants had been buying them off with the land itself and 
it is calculated that only the twentieth part of these rights 
still remained the property of the older nobles. Feudalism 
had been declining for a long time. The sacrifice was none 
the less praiseworthy for that. It would have been more so if 
the proprietors of the feudal rights had not, at the same time, 
relieved themselves of the feudal obligations, the heaviest of 
which was military service. Above all, this sacrifice would 
have had more force had it not been made under the influence 
of fear and in a very reckless manner. As a result, as though 


LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 269 


in a sort of delirium, everybody proposed to sacrifice privi- 
leges. After the signorial rights went the tithe, upon which 
however depended all publie charities; after the tithe, the 
special privileges of the provinces, the communes, and the cor- 
porations. In this night of panic rather than enthusiasm were 
abolished pell mell, without discrimination, rights of historic 
origin, which belonged to Frenchmen who were nobles as well 
as to those who were not; things that were outworn, and things 
which deserved to remain. An entire organization of social 
life disappeared and its downfall created a void which in our 
own day legislation has attempted to remedy in order not to 
leave individuals isolated and without protection. Mirabeau 
who was absent on that night was the first to blame this tre- 
mendous demolition, this “electric storm,” and to foresee its 
consequences. “They had,” said Rivarol, “uprooted the tree 
that they should have trimmed.” It was already impossible to 
retrieve this mistake and one evil, at least the immediate evil, 
was irreparable. Because if at one fell swoop France had 
been made uniform through the suppression of all the excep- 
tions, which had made financial administration so difficult, the 
state at the same time took over burdens which, in many cases, 
were the offset to the abolished privileges. As for the public 
generally, it interpreted this hecatomb in the light of its own 
desires, that is, a deliverance from all obligations. The result 
was that overnight every one ceased paying. The collection of 
the taxes which the Assembly thought had been reéstablished 
by proclaiming justice for all, only became the more difficult. 
They had thought to “stop the fire by pulling down the houses,” 
but the violence of the flames were only redoubled. 

At the end of this same month, August, 1789, Necker was in 
trouble again and appeared before the Assembly. The treasury 
was again empty. The public revenues were exhausted and 
the receipts did not cover half the expenses. Necker called 
upon the Assembly to establish order, without which the collec- 
tion of taxes was impossible, and to authorize a loan. The 
taxes came in no better and the loan lagged. On the twenty- 
fourth of September Necker announced that he was checkmated 


270 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


and could do nothing more. He described the increasing penury 
of the state, the danger of leaving it without resources when 
the scarcity of food was already causing trouble, and asked 
them to vote a special contribution, to be called a “patriotic 
tax,” of a quarter of all net incomes over four hundred livres. 

The Assembly was more distressed by this demand than by 
the portrayal of the disorders which had ruined the treasury. 
Having come together to find a remedy for the deficit and to 
lighten the taxes, they found themselves face to face with an 
increased deficit and the necessity of levying a tax heavier 
than any that had existed before. For these representatives 
of the middle classes, it was a terrible blow. Certainly this 
was not what the Third Estate had expected. It appeared 
from Necker’s speech, the speech of the financier, that a revolu- 
tion was not a good method for solving the financial question, 
the question which so terrified France and of which she so 
bitterly complained. The Assembly feared the discredit it 
would bring upon itself with regard to this part of its program, 
since the constitutional government which it wished to establish 
had promised to do better than the absolute monarchy. It was 
on the point of refusing the tax. At this moment Mirabeau, 
with a greater sense for the state and government, intervened 
and carried the majority with him by showing that the Assem- 
bly would perish all the more surely by a “hideous bankruptcy.” 
It was this indeed that was to kill the Revolution a few years 
later. 

In the writing of history the dividing into chapters is, for 
the most part, artificial; the breaks are arbitrary, because events 
are always moving. When did the Revolution begin? At what 
moment did the reign of Louis XVI end? Several dates might 
be given. It seems rational to fix the days of October, 1789, for 
the reasons which follow. 

The States General had opened in accordance with the tra- 
ditional principles and ceremonials. Then the distinction be- 
tween the three orders, an essential distinction, had disappeared. 
The States had become a National Assembly which proclaimed 
itself a Constituent Assembly. While it was occupied in giving 


LOUIS XVI AND THE REVOLUTION 271 


a constitution to the realm, that is, a new form to society and 
government, it had not only been powerless to find a remedy 
for the financial ills, the purpose for which it had been con- 
voked, but it had actually aggravated those ills. Every one 
therefore was surprised and disappointed. But if the king and 
the Assembly understood far better than has been admitted that 
it was a question of revolution, it was too near its inception for 
them not to believe that everything could be arranged. They 
were also too close to believe that they were in an entirely new 
situation. And in fact it was not new. There was one thing 
necessary for 1t to become so: that the debate should no longer 
be between the king and the Assembly merely, that another 
force, and this time one truly revolutionary, should intervene, 
should impose itself upon these two powers and should thence- 
forth become more powerful than they. This happened in 
October at the moment when the royal authority had already 
been diminished by the Assembly and when the prestige of the 
Assembly had been weakened by its inability to maintain order 
or reéstablish the finances. 

Since July the Assembly had been discussing the Constitu- 
tion and Louis XVI had allowed this debate to begin. But he 
was the living law. It was for him to accept or reject the 
blows dealt to his authority. The Assembly therefore always 
feared refusal and was tempted to see either at court or in 
the army, plots for encouraging the king in his resistance. To 
spread the fear of these plots and to denounce them constantly, 
was the rôle of the agitators who quickly appeared on all sides 
and for whom the taking of the Bastille and the disorders which 
followed it had been a signal victory. Among them were such 
men as Camille Desmoulins, Marat, and Loustalot who by 
their speeches and through the press were rousing all Paris. 
The Assembly distrusted Paris where its new and extremely 
dangerous municipal law, the origin of all that was to happen 
later, had created a commune of three hundred members. This 
commune was still moderate in temper but it was served by a 
national guard which under the direction of La Fayette, a 
utopian idealist, avid of popularity, was a poor guaranty of 


272 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


order. The Parisian agitators did not miss an opportunity to 
arouse the rabble, and the growing anxiety of the Assembly 
whom they unceasingly menaced and intimidated, did not escape 
them. During the first days of October the rumor was started 
that at Versailles, at a banquet of the bodyguard, the new tri- 
colored cockade had been trodden under foot and that the king 
was preparing to use force. On the fifth, a few of the Paris 
bakeries having run out of bread, because the supply was be- 
ginning to suffer from the general disorganization, there was an 
uprising of the women, which increased rapidly and the watch- 
word, “To Versailles,” was circulated everywhere. Lafayette, 
after a little hesitation, had the great weakness to yield and 
the national guard, instead of barring its way, followed the 
tumultuous crowd. The rioters then proceeded to Versailles, 
invaded the National Assembly and the chateau, cut the throats 
of the bodyguard and demanded that the king should return to 
Paris. Lafayette promised this and on the sixth of October, 
followed by the crowd, or rather its prisoner, he conducted the 
king, the queen, the dauphin and the deputies, back to the 
capital. “We are bringing back the baker, the baker’s wife 
and the baker’s little boy,” sang the crowd. The sad truth was 
that the king and the Assembly had both capitulated. From 
that time on, the rioters held their hostages. On the day when 
the more violent elements were to become masters of Paris 
and its municipality, its commune, they were also to become 
the masters of the government of France. The history, the 
mechanism, the progress of the Revolution up to the 9th Ther- 
midor are to be found in these significant events. 





CHAPTER XVI 
THE REVOLUTION 


THE sinister meaning of those days of October, when even 
the worst excesses went unpunished, was finally understood; 
one hundred and twenty deputies, finding that the Assembly 
was no longer free, withdrew. Among them was Mounier, the 
author of the Vizille program. Moreover, ever since the month 
of June, emigration had been going on. From the ideal of 
fraternity, men were passing into civil war just as a little later, 
for the love of humanity, they would rush into foreign war. 

The effect of the first emigrations was not merely that, within, 
it weakened the elements most likely to resist disorder. For 
the most part, the émigrés were not timid or afraid of revolu- 
tion; they were men of energy who wanted to combat it and 
who found it as natural to go over to the enemy as, under the 
Fronde, Condé and Turenne had done. They were thus led 
to take up arms against France and perceived too late that the 
European powers were not disposed to make any sacrifices to 
restore the French monarchy. The first emigration brought in 
its train serious consequences within France. It caused great 
embarrassment to the king whom the émzgrés did not pardon 
for his concessions to the revolutionary party and who was 
caught between two fires. The deputies of the Third Estate 
who, like Mounier, withdrew through spite and immediately 
gave up the struggle, were just as guilty. In any case, both 
had come to understand that it was a question of a revolution. 
But there were still many who kept their illusions or were blind 
to everything. In this respect, one of the comic incidents which 
marked these tragic times was that presented by the parliament 
when they pretended, as though nothing had changed, to regis- 


ter the decrees of the National Assembly in the same way that 
273 


274 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


they had registered the royal edicts. They were finally made 
to understand that they were dreaming, and were suppressed 
and forgotten. 

Towards the end of the year 1789, only a few months had 
passed since the convoking of the States General. Already so 
much had been transformed that a simple return to the old 
state of affairs was no longer possible. Louis XVI’s acceptance 
of all these events has seemed inexplicable. His unconquerable 
aversion to the use of force does not entirely explain his pas- 
sivity. But the author of T'élémaque and the wise Mentor him- 
self would have been quite as embarrassed as he. Let us im- 
agine that at any moment a bold stroke would have broken up 
the Assembly. What sort of a government would have been 
left? Would the king have reéstablished the parliaments, re- 
stored the privileged provinces, those states whose opposition 
and resistance had so hampered the monarchy? The old insti- 
tutions of historic origin, to which the king himself had at- 
tempted to give new life, had been overturned by the States 
General, also an institution of historic origin. Where was the 
way out? This contradiction had paralyzed the king’s action 
from the beginning of his reign. Perhaps he came to think, 
as did some of the men who had seen the embarrassments of 
the government before 1789, that after all what was disappear- 
ing had invited and deserved its fate. However, it was neces- 
sary to replace what had been destroyed. The constitution 
which the Assembly was elaborating had to take the place of 
customs, of traditional rights, of fundamental laws which made 
up what the jurists called the former Constitution of the realm. 
They still expected to preserve the rôle and future of the mon- 
archy, the principle of which had never even questioned. In 
1789, according to Camille Desmoulins, there were not six 
avowed republicans in France. 

But it was not only a question of giving the realm a form of 
government and of choosing between the constitutional theories 
then in vogue. It was a question of governing while the con- 
stitution was in the making. This the Assembly undertook to 
do; and some of the measures which it adopted were to produce 


THE REVOLUTION 275 


some totally unexpected repercussions. Moreover, it was neces- 
sary to reckon with personal ambitions, men who were aspiring 
to power, opposing parties which had immediately appeared 
and who would fight to obtain control. The monarchical 
constitution which was being prepared was destined to be 
ephemeral; for the same reasons those which followed it were 
to be no less so. 

In order to find our way through these confused events we 
must bear in mind a few simple and clear ideas. Every one 
knows that up to the 9th Thermidor, the most violent of the 
revolutionaries eliminated successively, first, the more moderate 
spirits, and then the less violent. The mechanism of these 
successive eliminations was always the same. It served against 
the Constitutionals, the Girondins and against Danton. The 
system consisted in dominating the commune of Paris, in taking 
possession of it, in keeping the turbulent parties in Paris in a 
state of continual exaltation by means of the press and of the 
clubs, and in playing upon such powerful sentiments as the 
fear of treason and of famine, through which a large city can 
always be roused; and then by intimidating, through insurrec- 
tion, the assemblies filled with weak and hesitating men. The 
financial, religious, and foreign policies of the first two assem- 
blies, the Constituent and the Legislative, aided to a singular 
degree the progress of that demagogy which triumphed under 
the Convention. 

The executive power was suspended and the ministers counted 
for naught. Assuming sovereign power, the Assembly passed 
laws continuously. It reorganized all of France, simplified 
even the map, divided the provinces into departments of about 
equal size, and brought uniformity where there had been di- 
versity. This superpower was brought to a halt by the deficit. 
The Assembly even aggravated the distress of the treasury by in- 
novations which created new expenses. By forcing certain meas- 
ures of redemption and reimbursements, it exhausted the old 
resources without supplying new ones. The abolition of fiscal 
privileges did no good because those who had not been exempt 
before asked for and obtained discounts which quite offset the 


276 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


amount which the former privileged classes would pay in the 
future. As for collecting the taxes, we have already seen that 
the prevailing anarchy made the results almost ridiculous. 
They were to fall more and more below what was expected 
because of the relaxation of authority, the general disorganiza- 
tion, and the overturning of private fortunes. 

By autumn, the Assembly found itself before an impassable 
gulf. Necker, with his old expedients, was no longer heeded. 
The magician of yesterday had lost his prestige. It was neces- 
sary to find some new remedy and the one they hit upon was 
strange. The clergy possessed a large number of landed proper- 
ties. Calonne had already considered using them to make up 
this deficit. The clergy had to consent to “put its lands at 
the disposition of the nation” for operations of credit, much like 
those which took place under the old régime when the state 
borrowed readily through the intermediary of the great bodies 
and the municipalities. As soon as the Assembly was able to 
“dispose” of this enormous capital, it was tempted to turn it 
into money in order to rid itself of financial embarrassments 
worse than those which it thought it could remedy. The ecclesi- 
astical property, soon increased by that of the crown and of | 
the émigrés, formed the nationalized property that was put up 
at auctions. The assignats were in a sense mortgage bonds, 
guaranteed by the nationalized property, and represented an 
advance on what their sale would produce. Only since the value 
of the lands to be confiscated was considerable (it has been esti- 
mated at about two billions) and since the government wished 
to avoid any chance of failure, it stipulated, in order to attract 
buyers, that the latter would have twelve years in which to pay. 
These provisions had consequences of historic importance, 
which no one foresaw. 

In fact, the 400 millions of assignats in the form of 
mortgage bonds, issued in the month of December, 1789, were 
rapidly absorbed. They represented a claim for that amount 
against the confiscated property. ‘The needs of the treasury 
were immense and always increasing. In April, 1790, the 
Assembly started another stage in their proceedings. The clergy 


THE REVOLUTION 277 


were purely and simply dispossessed, in exchange for which 
the state assumed the expenses of the Church and of public 
charity. The wealth of which the Assembly had taken posses- 
sion was to put to an end all financial difficulties by securing 
resources which were considered to be almost inexhaustible. It 
served as a basis for another issue of assignats, this time, of 
paper money. There were many warnings, even in the Assem- 
bly. Law’s disastrous example was recalled. Certain orators 
prophesied what was actually to happen—the progressive de- 
cline in value of the assignats and the misery which would 
follow. But the means were too tempting and the Assembly 
had no other way of fulfilling its promises. From that time on, 
the malady of inflation followed its fatal course—constant 
depreciation which could not be controlled, and which called 
for larger and larger issues—just what we have seen in our 
own day in Russia and Germany. Starting with four hundred 
millions, the Revolution, at the end of a few years will have 
issued 45 billions of assignats when it will finally have to an- 
nounce itself completely bankrupt. 

The system of paper money, by ruining private fortunes, 
raising the cost of living, and by provoking speculation and 
panic, contributed not a little, especially in Paris, to keeping 
up that insurrectional state of mind so indispensable to the 
ringleaders. But, by a very natural phenomenon, the assignats, 
from which the towns suffered at once, were a blessing to the 
country districts. As a matter of fact, it was through the 
assignats which were depreciating every day, but of which, in 
exchange for their products, they received larger and larger 
quantities, that the buyers of the nationalized properties, peas- 
ants, for the most part, managed to free themselves. In 1796, 
long before the expiration of the twelve years, an assignat of 
one hundred livres was worth just six sous. However, the 
state received its own paper at par. It happened, therefore, 
that many managed to become proprietors at the price of a 
few pullets. The new conveyances of the nationalized proper- 
ties were made on equally advantageous conditions, assignats 
and orders having collapsed at an increasingly rapid rate. Thus 


278 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


was swallowed up without any profit to the state but greatly 
to the benefit of the rural districts, the enormous capital which 
was to reéstablish the national finances. The operation was 
disastrous for the public treasury, the stockholders and the in- 
habitants of the towns. It was magnificent and unexpected for 
the farmers. And the less their acquisitions had cost them, the 
more they wished for the duration of the régime which had 
. permitted them to enrich themselves. Since in most cases they 
had acquired the land for almost nothing, they feared either 
that it would be taken back again or that they would be called 
to render an account and forced to supplement the price. They 
thus became interested partisans of the Revolution which found 
that the paper money was an attraction which more than bal- 
anced the antagonism caused by the sufferings and vexations 
(the law of the maximum, requisitions and lawsuits) which the 
frightfully high cost of living quickly brought about. One 
might say that without the assignats, the sale of the nationalized 
property would not have brought to the Revolution what may 
probably be considered its most solid popularity. 

In committing itself to the paper money, the Assembly thus 
opened a whole series of consequences. The confiscation of 
the ecclesiastical possessions opened another. It is difficult not 
to see a connection between this measure and that which the 
Assembly took in July, 1790, when it voted the civil constitu- 
tion of the clergy. They had dispossessed the clergy partly 
that it should be less strong. They should have suspected that 
it might remain the stronger for the very fact that it had been 
dispossessed. The second order, that of the nobility, had been 
suppressed and its titles abolished. The first order (it realized 
it too late) was to disappear in its turn. In order that the 
clergy should cease to be a political body, the Assembly wished 
to make it dependent upon the civil power. In order to bring 
this about, it attempted to control the organization of the 
Church. By so doing it immediately touched the consciences 
of the people and created a new sort of conflict. Almost every- 
where the priests who had sworn loyalty to the civil constitu- 
tion which was not recognized by the Pope, were disavowed by 


THE REVOLUTION 279 


the faithful. The “unsworn” priest, was the true priest. In 
wishing to prevent a counter-revolution the members of the Con- 
stituent Assembly gave it formidable nourishment. They 
started the religious war. 

In order to overturn so many things, to disregard so many 
interests, traditions and sentiments, the majority, opposed by 
the Right wing which included men of talent like Maury and 
Cazalés, needed support from without. It was condemned from 
the very first hour to seek the aid of demagogy and not to 
recognize the Left as enemies. It looked upon Camille Des- 
moulins and Marat himself, as useful auxiliaries through the 
impetus which they gave. Furthermore, it refused to put a 
stop to the excesses of the press, even of the sanguinary, l’Ami 
du Peuple. Neither would it renounce making public the de- 
bates nor forbid demonstrations by the galleries, nor the bring- 
ing into the Chamber of sometimes scandalous delegations. 
Neither would it close the clubs and popular societies which 
were the leaven of the Revolution. They themselves had, as a 
meeting place, the Jacobin Club where their policy originated. 
Those who were to separate themselves from the mother cell, 
like the Feuillants and the Girondists, were to find themselves 
isolated and crushed. The majority had need of the rabble, 
through which if necessary a riot could be started. The na- 
tional guard, entrusted to La Fayette, had been founded to 
preserve both order and the Revolution. Two-thirds of the 
sections of which it was composed, in Paris, were more favor- 
able to the Revolution than to order and they had, as chiefs, 
Danton and Santerre. The rest of France had been divided 
into districts whose electoral committees, permanently open, 
were centers of agitation; they were never dissolved nor their 
offices closed. 

The two men who by reason of their personal situation and 
their popularity could pretend to any sort of a great rôle, 
Lafayette and Mirabeau, were jealous of each other and could 
not agree. Both made use of the same methods of flattering 
the crowd, and used at the same time both the court and the 
agitators in order to obtain control. ‘In this way, they also 


280 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


made for disorder; only, endowed with political talent, Mira- 
beau perceived first in what direction the Assembly was tend- 
ing. He wished to stop, hold back, and dike up the Revolution. 
Ever since March, 1790, he had been negotiating with the king 
and queen. He overwhelmed them with his advice. It was 
a moment of calm, when Louis himself had the illusion that 
his concessions, certain of which had surprised even his ad- 
versaries, might not be useless. The Fête of the Federation 
at the Champ de Mars seemed to mark a better feeling. The 
day chosen for the reunion of the delegates from the national 
guards, and the deputations from all the departments, and for 
celebrating the new unity of France was the anniversary of the 
fall of the Bastille. This event had already become a symbol 
and a legend, purified and rid of all memories of insurrection 
and riot. The national guards and the members of the Federa- 
tion, sixty thousand men from all the former provinces, repre- 
sented the French bourgeoisie. Even at Paris, the electors, all 
bourgeois and taxpayers, had just renominated Bailly and the 
moderate municipality. Everybody, the king at their head, took 
the oath of loyalty to the Federation before the “altar of the 
Fatherland.” It was the triumph of the middle classes. Ca- 
mille Desmoulins and Marat were only the more ardent to 
excite the true “patriots” to denounce the reaction, the “great 
treason” of M. de Mirabeau and to demand hangings and massa- 
eres. The majority of the Assembly, faithful to its policy, 
refused to take action against these demagogues. The result 
was that a year later on this same Champ de Mars, where he 
had been acclaimed and where there had been a general em- 
bracing, Lafayette commanded the troops to fire upon the 
crowd. | 

From the time of the Fête of the Federation, from that 
illusory calm, up to 1791, the disorder became more and more 
aggravated. It was not only the customs offices that were pil- 
laged. There was no longer merely a Jacquerie; military 
mutinies appeared. These had already been going on for some 
time in the war ports and the French ambassador at London 
reported that England was rejoicing over the disorganization 





THE REVOLUTION 281 


of the French navy through these troubles. The Assembly had 
closed its eyes to these disorders, even to the serious ones which 
had taken place at Toulon. In the month of August, 1790, it 
had to be admitted that insubordination was growing in the 
army. After three regiments had revolted at Nancy, the As- 
sembly bestirred itself and ordered Bouillé, who was command- 
ing at Metz, to suppress it. The repression was severe and in 
the “patriot” papers, the mutineers of the regiment of Château- 
vieux were represented as martyrs. The example of Nancy 
and the energy of Bouillé stopped the disintegration of the 
army, but the Assembly, intimidated by the press, dared inter- 
fere no more. A general insurrection of the crews, which soon 
broke out at Brest, was not repressed. In a short time, disei- 
pline in the fleets and in the dockyards was ruined. Some at- 
tacks were made upon the officers themselves, a great part of 
whom emigrated, abandoning “posts where there was no longer 
either honor or security.” Soon the Revolution was to find it- 
self at war with England and its fleet could do no more than 
let itself be sunk, after the manner of the Vengeur. Bouillé had 
at least rendered the service of keeping the old army on its feet 
and the Revolution was very shortly to need it. 

‘A hundred pamphleteers whose sole opportunity was dis- 
order, a multitude of independent foreigners who preached dis- 
cord in all the public places, an immense populace accustomed 
for a year to a succession of victories and crimes ;” it is in these 
terms that Mirabeau described the state of Paris at the end of 
the year 1790, three months after the final retirement of 
Necker. Mirabeau then undertook to moderate the Revolution 
without breaking with it, even remaining in alliance with the 
Jacobins. He wished to make use of what prestige royalty 
still possessed, to prepare for the next elections so as to obtain 
an Assembly of less advanced ideas which would revise the 
Constitution in a reasonable way and so as not to diminish 
the royal power excessively. Mirabeau was not the only one 
who was forming projects of this sort. In order to carry out 
these designs, it was necessary to find some support since the 
Jacobins were relying upon the power of riots. Mirabeau had 


282 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


been thinking for a long time of removing the king and the 
Assembly out of reach of the influence of the Parisian dema- 
gogy. It would be necessary to have an armed force in order 
to accomplish this removal but it was impossible to count on 
the national guard and, besides, La Fayette, who had been ap- 
proached on the subject, had refused. There remained the 
regular army. Bouillé, the commander who had come before 
the public through the repression of the insubordination at 
Nancy, proposed a plan by which Louis XVI should join him 
at Montmédy, after which it would be possible to convoke a 
new Assembly somewhere else than at Paris. 

No one knows what success this plan might have had if 
Mirabeau had lived. Would he have been able to obtain from 
the Assembly the authorization to allow the king to leave for 
any place whatsoever on the frontier? Would he even have 
persisted in his projects? The secret had leaked out and the 
Jacobins, put on their guard, were already demanding measures 
against emigration and the émigrés. In any case, Mirabeau 
died after a brief illness, April 2, 1791. His relations with the 
court had become known. He was openly accused of having 
received money to pay his personal debts. In spite of the 
solemn funeral ceremonies which were observed in his honor, 
his credit began to suffer under the violent attacks of Desmou- 
lins and Marat. It is probable that he would soon have been 
compelled to defend himself; he had foreseen the possibility 
of his “ostracism.” He disappeared. His plans, uncertain 
enough when he was there to defend them, were now becoming 
very hazardous. However, Louis XVI and Bouillé persisted 
in them; they even saw in the death of Mirabeau one reason 
the more for escaping from the Parisian tyranny. On April 
eighteenth a riot had prevented the king from going to Saint- 
Cloud and Danton’s battalion of the national guard had held La 
Fayette back when he was hastening to clear the Tuileries. 
In spite of the Constitution, the king was no longer free. The 
Constitutional party was powerless to protect his liberty. This 
event decided Louis. He left the Tuileries with his family 
during the night of June twentieth to join Bouillé at Mont- 


THE REVOLUTION 283 


médy. Recognized at Varennes, he was arrested and brought 
back to Paris. 

This flight had been badly planned. Bouillé was hardly sure 
of his troops, among whom the Jacobins, who hated and sus- 
pected him, had been spreading their propaganda. If Louis 
XVI had wished to leave France to emigrate as Monsieur— 
the future Louis XVIII—had done and who reached Belgium 
without difficulty, he could easily have escaped. Having re- 
turned to Paris, more than ever a prisoner, there remained to 
him the possibility of abdicating, of saving his head by renounc- 
ing the throne. This idea never for a moment occurred to 
him; a king of France did not abdicate. Neither Charles VIT 
nor Henry III, in circumstances perhaps worse than these, had 
done so. 

Moreover, the episode at Varennes had had the effect of 
making Louis more precious than ever to those who were called 
the Constitutionals. Without the king, however insignificant 
they rendered his rôle, the Constitution which they had made 
would fall to earth and they with it. The flight of the king had 
increased the boldness of the extremists who were crying for 
the overthrow of Louis. If the monarchy disappeared, it would 
mean the triumph of the violent party. The Constitutionalists, 
who had thought that all would be well and that they could 
put a stop to this era of revolution, began to fear an endless 
anarchy. They also began to fear lest the Extreme Left, of 
which, up to that point, they had made use as an advance 
guard, should be victorious. They came, therefore, to have 
more regard for royalty and less complacency towards the 
demagogues. It was like a halt of a few months, an attempt 
at reaction against the disorder, but without hope and without 
results. 

On July fifteenth, the majority of the Assembly had decided 
that since the king was inviolable, the Varennes incident would 
have no aftermath. On the sixteenth, the Jacobins laid upon 
the altar of the country, at the Champ de Mars, a petition 
which called for the abdication of the king and they organized 
a manifestation against the Assembly which the ringleaders 


284 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


took upon themselves to turn into a riot. For the first and 
only time the Assembly held its ground and proclaimed martial 
law. La Fayette himself ordered the guards to fire on the 
crowd who refused to obey his commands. On this same spot 
where a year earlier there had been fraternizing and rejoicing, 
there now lay three or four hundred killed and wounded. 

The agitators trembled and believed their cause lost. A little 
more vigor and the demagogues would have run to cover. They 
were reassured when they saw that the Constitutionals were 
not hunting out those responsible for the trouble and that they 
did not even dare close the Jacobin Club which they had aban- 
doned to form another, that of the Feuillants. The energy of 
the moderates stopped with the fusillade of the Champ de 
Mars and it is easy to understand why the members of the 
Right, the émigrés themselves to whom the Constitutionals now 
turned, did not respond to their overtures; these weak shows of 
resistance inspired the confidence of no one. As a matter of 
fact only six deputies remained with the Jacobins, but the Club 
remained the soul of the Revolution. It was necessary to con- 
quer the Extreme Left or to submit to its yoke. The Constitu- 
tional Left once separated from the Extreme Left without 
having crushed it, was as short-lived as its own Constitution. 

It is therefore useless to stop to examine this stillborn docu- 
ment which was, however, accepted by Louis and to which he 
gave his oath. He kept this oath but those who were bound to 
carry the Revolution to the bitter end, that is to destroy the 
monarchy, were to find another pretext to overturn it. 

Barnave had said in July, 1791: “The Revolution cannot 
go a step further without great danger.” On September thir- 
tieth the Constituent Assembly held its last session before 
Louis XVI, whom the president, Thouret, addressed in those 
memorable words, a monument of human illusions; “Sire, Your 
Majesty has put an end to the Revolution.” The first act only 
was ended. The Assembly, before disbanding, had passed a 
resolution which was to renew the drama; it had decided that 
its members should not be eligible for reélection. A strange 
sacrifice for which various reasons have been given—disinter- 


THE REVOLUTION 285 


estedness, an affectation of virtue, naiveté—but whose real rea- 
son was without doubt that this Assembly born of the States 
General, where the three orders were represented, wished to 
signify that having destroyed these orders it had severed the 
last bond which held it to the old régime. Having made a clean 
sweep of all that belonged to the past, it was itself to disappear 
in its turn. All this was rational as was the entire work of 
the Constituent Assembly. But realities were swiftly to take 
the upper hand. It was chimerical to establish a constitution 
for the purpose of ending a revolution to which new fuel was 
being added each day. And this new Assembly which had 
nothing in common with that just disbanded added fuel also. 
The Legislative Assembly may quite properly be designated 
as the second impact of the Revolution. 

The new members, all new men, for the most part very 
young and almost all obscure, were elected by a limited number 
of taxpaying voters, consisting of that numerous educated and 
comfortable bourgeoisie which had been developing for the past 
hundred years under the prosperity of France and which had 
voted at the moment of the Varennes incident, and under its 
influence. Among these deputies, there were few nobles or 
none and no priests save a few who had sworn loyalty to the 
Constitution. The Right was now composed of the Constitu- 
tionals and the Feuillants, the Left of the previous Assembly. 
But this new body was homogeneous. The men who composed 
it were nearly all of the same origin and of the same training. 
In philosophy and polities, they held the ideas which the 
writers of the eighteenth century had spread. Their theories 
about the world and Europe were derived from the systems 
and traditions which had controlled opinion under Louis XV 
—the natural frontiers, the struggle with Austria, the alliance 
with Prussia. Moreover, this bourgeoisie had followed events 
since 1789. They had heard Sieyés tell them that up to that 
time they had amounted to nothing—an exaggeration in any 
case—and that hereafter they would be everything. But this 
could mean nothing unless they took possession of the govern- 
ment. 


286 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


To do this, it was necessary to carry through the Revolution 
and overturn the monarchy; a thing that only a great national 
commotion could accomplish, so closely was the monarchy bound 
to France. <A republic could be established only by war. But 
the republic once established, it would still be necessary to 
know who would direct it, and to whom it would belong. Hence 
would arise opposing parties and their desperate struggles. The 
republic, like the German Empire, could not be created by 
laws and discussions, but only according to Bismarck’s formula, 
by blood and iron. 

The happenings in France had been received with apathy 
by the other European governments. Revolutions were not a 
new thing to their chancelleries and it was a custom which has 
not yet disappeared, even to desire them for one’s enemies. It 
was everywhere considered that the Revolution was weakening 
the resistance of France and London, Berlin, Vienna, and St. 
Petersburg rejoiced over it. “England is persuaded that she 
has nothing more to fear from France,” wrote the French am- 
bassador at London. She was more than ever convinced of it 
when the Constituent Assembly which, in contrast with the 
Legislative Assembly, was pacific, had refused to keep to the 
engagements of the dynastic agreements with Spain from whom 
England wanted to take the Bay of Nootka in so-called Cali- 
fornia. Nothing, moreover, could be more advantageous for 
the English than the disorder in the French war ports and the 
disorganization of the navy. Pitt persisted in remaining neu- 
tral in order to watch Russia; Catherine counted on the ruin 
of France to realize her designs not only in Poland but on 
Constantinople. Prussia was most pleased of all. “The mo- 
ment has come,” wrote Hertzberg to Frederick William as early 
as July 1789. ‘Tere is a situation by which the powers ought 
to profit.” Prussia reckoned that she would be delivered from 
the surveillance which the French monarchy exercised in 
Europe by virtue of the terms of the treaty of Westphalia, and 
she was playing a double game: either an expansion of her 
territories on the Rhine, or the final partition of Poland. 
There is no doubt but that Prussian agents had been busy in 


THE REVOLUTION 287 


the days of the Revolution. “At Paris the King of Prussia 
was inciting the revolutionists against Austria, and in Vienna 
he was arming Leopold ITI against the French,” says Emilie 
Bourgeois. The emperor, brother of Marie Antoinette, im spite 
of the relation between the two courts and of the common policy 
which the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons had been pursuing for 
the last forty years, was not the slowest to understand the situ- 
ation: “There is no reason why we should waste our gold or 
our blood to restore France to her former position of im- 
portance.” And this was not the only time when the brother 
of Marie Antoinette spoke his mind. Albert Sorel has treated 
as a pathetic and impressive comedy the acts and words of the 
kings in the face of the Revolution. It is a sinister comedy 
with a changing and double action; the emigration was a whip 
in their hands and they used it to incite the revolutionary ele- 
ment in France, preferring that she should be the one to begin 
the war. They deliberately sacrificed the royal family to their 
own interests just as the émigrés, eager to confound the cause 
of the counter-revolution with the cause of the enemy, sacrificed 
it to their own passions. They perceived too late that they had 
aided at the same time the enemies of France and the man- 
euvers of the Girondists. 

In the new Assembly, composed mainly of mediocre men, 
the more brilliant members, grouped about a few deputies of 
the department of the Gironde, from whence their group took 
its name, were republicans without having yet declared them- 
selves as such. Because they were eloquent, they thought they 
were great statesmen. They thought the moment had come for 
their bourgeois aristocracy to govern France. The only ob- 
stacle was the monarchical Constitution of 1791 upon which 
the Feuillants thought themselves firmly established. The 
_ Girondists believed themselves quite capable of taking over the 
government. The members of the Constitutional Assembly had 
imagined that as they, with the aid of the Jacobins, had de- 
stroyed the old régime, the Revolution was established. The 
Girondists, on the other hand, thought that with the same sup- 
port, they could start it up again to their own advantage. And 


288 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


to abolish what remained of royalty, to “destroy its secular 
charm” according to the saying of Jean Jaurés, they did not 
hesitate to set fire to all Europe. 

If there was to be a choice between the countries which 
France should attack, it was necessary, in order to discredit the 
monarchy—to kill it morally—that the adversary should be 
Austria, the official ally of the government, the family ally of 
the king and queen. To drive France into war with Austria 
by appealing to the political traditions of Louis XIV and 
Richelieu, traditions to which French policy was always sensi- 
tive, would be to strike a mortal blow at royalty. ‘The rupture 
of the Austrian alliance,” said a Girondist, “is as necessary as 
the taking of the Bastille.” In fact this rupture brought the 
Revolution into the domain of foreign politics, and by a caleu- 
lation which proved to be fatally correct was to bring the king 
into conflict with the nation. 

However, the difficulties in starting such a war were numer- 
ous. France had nothing to gain by it. A pretext had to be 
found. One presented itself after the night of August fourth. 
Some of the German princes were protesting against the sup- 
pression of the feudal rights which they had possessed in Alsace; 
it was a question which could have been arranged without 
trouble through redemptions and purchase. But when there is 
a desire for war, it always comes. The Girondists even waived 
a capital objection to it. The war which they desired with 
Austria supposed, in order to conform to the classic tradition, 
that Prussia should be the ally of France and remain neutral. 
Now, after August, 1791, Frederick William and Leopold had 
drawn closer together. It was to the interests of both to observe 
the events in France, to adopt with respect to them a policy of 
waiting, an ambiguous policy which would not involve them 
whatever the outcome, and which found its expression in the 
equivocal Declaration of Pilnitz. This declaration, the émigrés, 
with criminal imprudence, interpreted publicly as a support 
given to their cause, as a condemnation of the constitutional 
régime accepted by Louis XVI, as a threat of the kings against 
the Revolution. But its true significance was that if France 


THE REVOLUTION 289 


waged war against Austria, she would have to fight Prussia 
too and finally all of Germany. This meant destroying the 
French policy of German equilibrium and renouncing the 
treaty of Westphalia. This was the situation which brought 
about a veritable revolution in Europe, much more serious than 
the people’s declaration of fraternity against tyrannies with 
which the Constituent Assembly had resounded. For France 
it was a leap in the dark and one full of danger. A slight 
knowledge of Europe or of French history was sufficient to 
enable one to foresee the tottering of the European system that 
had existed for a century and a half in the interest of France; 
a shock whose consequences would be still more inevitable than 
those of the internal revolution because the latter, sooner or 
later, would reach its goal and cease when it had fulfilled the 
aspirations of the country. Everything then suggested to Louis 
XVI, well versed, by his training, in European affairs, to op- 
pose the venture, to maintain the contact with Austria, to unite 
with her to preserve the equilibrium of Europe. Hence arose 
the idea to which the king turned as a last resort, the idea of a 
congress in which the whole situation would be examined. 
Austria with her old egoism, hoped to reap some profit from this 
congress and the project was speedily imputed to Louis as 
treason. 

The few months in which the Girondists, by sheer force of 
obstinate will, brought about the triumph of the war party, 
were decisive in the history of France. She still feels the effects 
of them. Her condition has been changed in proportion as the 
harmony between the European powers has changed and in 
proportion as her security, so painfully acquired, was compro- 
mised. All that the Revolution at first availed France, she was 
gradually to lose again. Her natural frontiers, possessed for a 
moment, were again to be lost. Individual liberty was to be 
replaced by military servitude. The hated personal tax was 
to reappear, having changed its name from the éaille to the 
income tax. This shift in policy, which occurred in 1792, was 
to result in evil consequences not the least of which were to be 
felt by the present generation. 


290 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Mirabeau had perceived and had prophesied to the Constitu- 
ent Assembly that a later age would be that of wars “more 
ambitious and more barbarous” than the others. He suspected 
the cosmospolitanism of these men of the Revolution which 
tended to disarm France. He feared their spirit of propa- 
ganda which tended to launch her into foreign adventures. He 
feared their ignorance of international politics which was to 
throw them head first into conflict with all Europe. He feared 
their illusions about others and about themselves because, im- 
agining that they were starting on a crusade, they would quickly 
confound liberation with conquest, and would provoke a coali- 
tion of the people which would be worse than that of the kings. 
Mirabeau was right. Brissot, the diplomat of the Gironde, hood- 
winked the Assembly with his eloquence. He thought that 
the nations would refuse to fight Revolutionary France. He 
assured them that Hungary was ready to rise against the Haps- 
burgs, that the King of Prussia had no money for war, that 
“the sentiment of the English about the Revolution was not 
doubtful,” that they applauded it and that the British govern- 
ment had “everything to fear, the impossibility of collecting its 
debts and the loss of its possessions in India.” Less than a 
year after the declaration of war against Austria, England was 
to enter the struggle; and this war, the great war and the real 
one, began under the most unfavorable conditions for France 
and was to continue after the Revolution had ended. 

There was at that time in France a great confusion in ideas, 
in opinions, which extended even to the vocabulary. The “pa- 
triots” were those who were preaching war against tyrants for 
the love of humanity and who at the same time were provoking 
contempt for discipline and encouraging the mutinous soldiers. 
They proclaimed, in the same breath, the disinterestedness of 
France and the natural right to annex to the nation all liberated 
populations. When Le Comtat, the district about Avignon, and 
Avignon itself, which belonged to the Pope, rose in revolt, the 
Constituent Assembly hesitated to receive them because annex- 
ation and conquests were contrary to their principles. These 
scruples were overcome by some of the members of the Left 


THE REVOLUTION 291 


who asked if the Revolution would refuse to complete France 
and if it was more timid than the monarchy. This old idea of 
the natural frontiers, of the rounding out of French territory, 
continued to work upon and influence the French people. Thus, 
there were many gates open to the ambitious men of the Gironde, 
through which they could force France into war. Their move 
played into the hands of the Jacobins; the Gironde could have 
done nothing without them and it ended by turning the Revo- 
lution over to them. 

In the beginning of the Legislative Assembly which met on 
October 1, 1791, the Girondists had pronounced themselves in 
favor of a war policy. Robespierre, who did not belong to the 
new Assembly, remained all-powerful at the great Club. He 
was at first opposed to the war and made fun, not without 
reason, of the illusions of Brissot, fearing as the Constituent 
Assembly had done, militarism and military dictators. He 
rallied to the war policy, however, as soon as he understood the 
advantages to be derived from it in combating the monarchy 
and the new incentive that it would give to the Revolution. 
Cosmopolitan and humanitarian Jacobinism, by means of a 
little well prepared oratory, became bellicose; it was sufficient 
to say that they were only going to combat tyranny. 

All the measures which Brissot and his friends were forcing 
upon the Assembly had as object to bring about a break with 
Louis. They consisted in threats against the émigrés, espe- 
cially against the brother of the king, and in penalties for 
the priests who refused to take the oath. Under these attacks 
on his family and his religious feeling, the king felt that he 
was compromised, not so much personally, but as the guardian 
of the great interests of France beyond her borders. By every 
means possible, his enemies sought to make his position un- 
tenable and to shackle him in his very rôle as constitutional 
sovereign. This is what with insidious skill, the Girondists 
accomplished, quite unconscious that they were working in the 
interest of the Jacobins and preparing their own ruin. 

Before describing the rapid succession of events, we must 
show what was the position of France at the end of the year 


292 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


1791, when the orators of the Legislative Assembly were already 
defying Europe. The general situation became less and less 
favorable. The assignats were depreciating, gold and silver 
was being hidden, the cost of living was rising, and the Assem- 
bly was resorting continually to new issues while accusing the 
speculators and counter-revolutionists for the growing discredit 
of its paper money. In the provinces, especially those of the 
west, the religious question was arousing much feeling. And 
finally the general disorganization of the country, far from 
being arrested, was greatly aggravated. The following is a pic- 
ture drawn by an historian who has carefully examined the 
situation: ‘A crowd of people out of work: smugglers who 
had ceased to have a trade through the disappearance of the 
taxes which had once made smuggling profitable; criminals 
who had been unwisely pardoned; as well as, to use the ex- 
pression of the deputy Lemontey, those flocks of foreign birds 
of prey who had descended upon revolutionary France, filled 
her with elements of disorder. They were adept at provoking 
pillage and incendiarism among populations imbued with the 
idea that every farmer or seller of grain was conspiring to 
starve them, every shopkeeper to loot them, every noble to 
bring back the old régime, and every refractory priest to destroy 
the Revolution.” And yet, even more than the Constituent 
Assembly, the Legislative hesitated to repress disorders or to 
use armed force. It allowed the anarchy to increase and even 
favored it. Two important things happened at Paris. La 
Fayette, who no longer had the confidence of any one, had left 
the command of the national guard; the municipality of Paris 
was delivered over to the Jacobins under the hypocrite Petion 
who authorized the insurrections that followed by arming the 
“sans-culottes” with pikes. It was under these conditions which 
combined every possible difficulty, that the Girondists launched 
France into a vast war. 

The period of the Constitutionals and the Feuillants was 
already over. They had no influence upon the Legislative As- 
sembly and controlled only the ministry; and from that, they 
were soon to be driven as well. In accord with the king, De 


THE REVOLUTION 293 


Lessart, the minister of foreign affairs, opposed the war. He 
was immediately denounced from the platform and in the press, 
as the protector of the émigrés and the head of an “Austrian 
Committee” which was said to be inspired by the queen. 
Until that time nothing had succeeded in seriously compromis- 
ing the royal family. Neither the affair of the necklace, be- 
fore 1789, nor the flight to Varennes, had destroyed the old 
prestige of that family whose life for eight hundred years had 
been fused with that of France. The accusation launched 
against the queen, the “Austrian,” of serving the interests of 
the enemy and turning the monarchy against the nation, was 
the poisoned arrow of the Girondists. To seal the fate of 
royalty, it was necessary to accuse it of nothing less than trea- 
son. In March, 1792, the Girondists won their first victory; 
Brissot was able to bring De Lessart up for trial. It amounted 
to an accusation against the king as well. 

Obeying the Constitution to the end, and faithful to his oath, 
Louis submitted to the vote of the Assembly. He accepted a 
ministry of Girondists with Dumouriez as president. The lat- 
ter was ready to do anything; he was the friend of all, and 
capable of good as well as evil; he flattered himself even more 
than Calonne had done, that he could manage everything by his 
tact, but, as a matter of fact, he let things drift. The Girondists, 
once in power, conducted things with a high hand. On April 
twentieth, they obtained from the Assembly by an almost unani- 
mous vote, the declaration of war against Austria, the prelude 
to a general war. This historic date cannot be understood in 
its full significance, unless we remember that five days before, 
the Legislative Assembly had authorized the “ignominious and 
degrading” apotheosis of those rebel soldiers of Nancy who 
had been chastised by Bouillé and to whom amnesty had later 
been granted. The Legislative Assembly had received their 
delegation with approval. The Jacobin Commune of Paris 
organized, in their honor, festivals which roused the indigna- 
tion even of the liberal-minded poet, André Chénier. This 
exaltation of mutiny at a moment when they were defying the 
half of Europe, gives us the measure of the political sense of 


294 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the Girondists. A country corrupted by demagogues and with- 
out a government was being blindly driven into war. It is thus 
they paved the way for the Terror; they were making a dicta- 
torship inevitable. 

The war of 1792 resembled that of 1740 in the anti-Aus- 
trian tradition upon which it was based. In other respects, 
happily for France, it was one of those old-fashioned wars in 
which campaigns dragged on, in which battles ordinarily were 
mere simple engagements, and in which few decisive blows were 
struck. As Mirabeau had proclaimed, it is when wars will 
have become altogether national, of a people against a people, 
that they will become really terrible. However, under Louis 
XV, the conflicts in which France had taken part had been 
fought on foreign soil, for at that time the superiority of France 
permitted her at the outbreak of hostilities to carry the war 
into the enemy’s country. It was not so in 1792. The speeches 
of Brissot and Vergniaud could not by themselves bring vic- 
tory; it was necessary to organize it. The three years of 
anarchy were dearly paid for. The plan contemplated first 
entering Belgium; it was hoped that the population would re- 
volt in France’s favor. Not only did it not revolt but two of 
the French corps, marching one upon Mons and the other upon 
Tournay, were repulsed by the Austrians in such panic that 
General Dillon was assassinated by the stragglers. The causes 
and responsibilities for this humiliating check were plain in- 
deed. The Girondists had tried to shift the responsibility by 
attributing it to the treason of the “Austrian Committee”—the 
latter meaning of course the queen and the king. From that 
time on the Girondists worked openly for the overthrow of the 
monarchy by forcing Louis XVI into impossible positions. 
They wished to force him to sign a decree condemning the 
priests who had not taken the oath of allegiance, to be de- 
ported. Another decree ordered the dissolution of his personal 
bodyguard. Finally, as the Girondists had been afraid of the 
national guard ever since the affair of the Champ de Mars, 
they demanded the creation at Paris of a camp to which should 
be called twenty thousand federal troops to replace the regular 


THE REVOLUTION 295 


army and to combat the counter-revolution. That is to say, 
and every one understood it, they were preparing to overthrow 
the government. Louis refused to sign the decrees and on 
the twelfth of June dismissed the Girondist ministers. As the 
king persisted in his veto, Dumouriez abandoned him and left 
on the eighteenth. The regiments had been removed and the 
Constitutional guard was dismissed. The federal troops from 
Marseilles who arrived first at Paris were authorized, after the 
intervention in their favor by Vergniaud, to lead a popular 
demonstration against the double veto. On June twentieth, a 
noisy delegation, bearing a petition for the recall of the Giron- 
dist ministers, filed before the acquiescent Assembly, then 
stormed the Tuileries which had been left without defense. It 
was on that day that Louis XVI showed his resigned and quiet 
courage in the face of the crowd who insulted and threatened 
him, and accepted the “red bonnet” which was offered him. 

The Girondists, who had permitted if not organized all this, 
triumphed in the humiliation of the king. But each of their 
victories over the monarchy was a much greater one for the 
Jacobins. In its fatuous blindness the Gironde missed no occa- 
sion of paving the way for its own ruin, with that of the king. 
From the Days in October up to the twentieth of June the dis- 
orders grew apace. No one doubted any longer that there was 
going to be a violent convulsion. The Prussians, in their turn, 
were at war with the French. The Gironde had succeeded in 
uniting Prussia and Austria, the two traditional rivals. Then, 
on the proposition of Vergniaud, the Assembly decreed that 
the country was in danger. It was in danger by its own fault, 
which was that of the Girondists. They had counted on one 
thing only, and that was that the war would overturn the 
monarchy. 

By proclaiming the country in danger, the Assembly made 
an appeal to French patriotism. In decreeing enrollments, it 
was adopting a decision of extreme urgency since France was 
about to be invaded. After so many accusations launched 
against the “Austrian Committee,” which in the popular opin- 
ion meant really the king and queen, and in the emotion caused 


296 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


by the danger of invasion and by a measure so extraordinary as 
the levy en masse, the idea that the monarchy had betrayed the 
nation was to grow with irresistible force. In the streets and 
even in the Assembly the fall of Louis was demanded. The 
result which the Girondists had desired was attained but it was 
the moment for which the Jacobins were waiting in order to 
go a step further. The king is guilty, declared Robespierre; 
the Assembly is also, since it has allowed him to betray the 
country. He added with his trenchant logic that the Assembly, 
not having overthrown the king when it should have done so, 
was thereby under suspicion and that it would now overturn the 
monarchy only to usurp the sovereignty of the people. It 
should therefore be dissolved and a National Convention be 
elected which would reserve to itself all power and which would 
be inacessible both to aristocrats and schemers. This speech, 
which began the Terror, pronounced a double death sentence, 
that of Louis and that of the Assembly. There was a shudder 
of horror. Then too late, the Girondists attempted to treat with 
the king, to assume the rôle of the Constitutionalists, and them- 
selves went so far as to advise Louis to leave Paris secretly, in 
other words to attempt another Varennes. La Fayette also 
was about to leave the country. But Louis, who had perhaps 
too easily sacrificed himself so far, hoped for nothing further. 
Disgusted with these later overtures, weary of the factions 
which, having urged on the Revolution, in turn became afraid 
of it, he no longer had confidence in any one. He had never 
been inclined to action, to flee, and he did not believe it possible. 
The Constitutionalists and the Girondists did not agree. There 
was not even a hope that they might agree sufficiently to form 
a party of order. Even under the guillotine they would never 
be reconciled. It was too late. All the furors of civil war 
were uniting to destroy royalty. The manifesto of the Prus- 
sian general, Brunswick, published in the midst of these hap- 
penings with its insolent threats to destroy Paris, was conceived 
in terms best calculated to wound the pride of the French. 
Tt was sufficient to convince them that there was nothing left 
them but to fight or to perish, and to encourage them in the 


THE REVOLUTION 297 


idea that the enemy and the king were conspiring against them. 
If, as is believed, the Marquis de Limon launched this defiant 
manifesto under the signature of Brunswick, we may say that 
it was from the émigrés that Louis received his death blow. 

While the king resigned himself to his fate, the Girondists 
tried in vain to delay his fall, realizing at last that it would be 
their own. Another uprising organized by Danton and Robe- 
spierre, forced their hand on August tenth. They had disarmed 
the king and the Assembly and delivered Paris to the Jacobins 
by calling in the federal troops. There was hardly more than 
the national guard to protect the Tuileries. Mandat, a faith- 
ful officer, who was commanding on that day, was assassinated 
by Danton’s order. The method had not changed in any way 
since October. To the end, the Revolution progressed by way 
of rioting. While the royal family, threatened with death, 
was leaving the Tuileries and taking refuge in the midst of 
the Assembly, the insurrection violently took possession of the 
Commune of Paris. The Jacobins were completely victorious. 
On the day following the tenth of August, Robespierre went 
to the Hôtel de Ville and repeated with greater emphasis his 
threats against the Girondists. From that time on, the Com- 
mune in insurrection made the laws and became the veritable 
Legislative Assembly. They had conquered the government. 
In permanent session they decreed the suspension of the king 
—which meant his fall though the word was not used. They 
demanded that the royal family be delivered to them and con- 
ducted them as prisoners to the Temple. Danton became the 
minister of justice. The tribunal of the people, the Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal, was created. Finally the Assembly, still in 
the power of the Commune, abdicated completely, voting a new 
electoral law for the nomination of a sovereign Convention 
which should combine all the powers of government—just as 
Robespierre had demanded. 

So many melodramatic and tragic scenes, so much blood- 
shed, began to arouse the imagination especially in a country 
like France, where for nearly a century and a half tranquillity 
had no longer been seriously troubled and where life had been 


298 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


brilliant and gentle. There has resulted a tendency to ex- 
aggerate those events and to magnify their personages. In 
reality those upstarts of the riots were in turn astonished by 
and then frightened at their own victory. They felt their 
instability, suspecting that they might not be followed by the 
people as a whole. They feared a reaction and they might 
well fear it for already Thermidor was not far off. Hence 
arose numberless obscure intrigues, the history of which is 
little known, but whose existence is attested by the continual 
accusations of treason which the men of the clubs directed 
against each other. From the mystery which still surrounds 
the fate of Louis XVII, M. Lenôtre has drawn the conclusion 
that the fiercest members of the Convention must have taken 
precautions and guaranties against the eventuality of a coun- 
ter-revolution. In any case, it is clear that they distrusted each 
other. It is natural also that having achieved power by means 
of audacity and violence and at the cost of certain risks, they 
should have thought as Danton did, that they could keep it 
only through exercising “more and more audacity” and more 
and more violence. That is the psychology of the Terror, since 
terrorism was used not only against the counter-revolutionists 
but in the world of the revolutionists themselves. There was 
no one who was not “suspect” because no one was sure either 
f the morrow or of his neighbor. Dantonists and Robespierre- 
ists dispute with each other without its being possible to 
fathom many of the enigmatic phrases thrown out by Danton 
and Robespierre and without its being possible to arrive at 
their ultimate intention or their deepest secrets. The twenty- 
four months of convulsions which separate the tenth of August 
from the 9th Thermidor are the paroxysm of this life of the 
clubs to which the Constitutionalists, then the Girondists, had 
allowed free play in the same intention and through the same 
necessity—because it was the very life of the Revolution. | 
Aften the tenth of August, the Jacobins in spite of their 

victory, did not feel sure of themselves. The Prussian army 
was invading France. The result of the elections was not cer- 
tain and, more than all, the Girondists were demanding that 


THE REVOLUTION 299 


the usurpation of the Commune should come to an end before 
the meeting of the new Assembly. Danton, whose fate was 
bound to the fate of the Commune in revolt, saw but one re- 
source—terrorism. It was not by chance that the massacres 
of September second took place on the same day as the second 
Parisian elections, and that these massacres were preceded by 
house to house visits and arrests en masse, which had been 
ordered by the minister of justice and this after the Legisla- 
tive Assembly had voted on August thirtieth that the Council 
of the Commune should submit to legal procedure. By this 
horrible action, which was their own work, Danton, the Com- 
mune, and the Jacobins defended themselves and cowed the 
Convention which in reality, like the Legislative Assembly, rep- 
resented a France much more moderate than Paris. Like the 
Legislative Assembly, also, this third Assembly was composed 
for the most part of timid men, favorable on the whole to the 
Girondists, but who, arriving a few days after the massacres of 
the prisons, were frightened before they began. Danton, 
elected in Paris with Robespierre and Marat himself, quitted 
the ministry after having paved the way for the fall of the 
Girondists, which was not far off. 

These events viewed from without did not fail to give the 
impression that France was being consumed by anarchy and 
was rushing to her doom. By placing end to end the hideous 
or banal manifestations of the demagogues, from the regular 
massacres down to the looting of the shops and markets, one 
could construct a tale of horror like that in which the ill-starred 
minister, Roland, was soon to set forth the effects of what he 
modestly terms “a disorganizing tendency.” One might thus 
be easily misled and it is certain that the enemy was deceived. 
He did not suspect that in the midst of this confusion certain 
elements of order had still survived; that in the space of three 
years not everything had been destroyed and that great re- 
sources still existed ; that a few conscientious men had remained 
at their posts, had continued to follow their calling and were 
doing their best to maintain or reéstablish an organization. 
France still possessed some administrators and some officers. 


300 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


This protection saved her. The volunteers who were coming 
into the armies were at least as insubordinate as they were en- 
thusiastic. But they came in contact there with some of the 
old troops, some organizations, some trained leaders and a 
discipline which little by little got the upper hand again. This 
“amalgam” ended by producing some strong regiments and by 
making the military temperament of the nation count for some- 
thing. This is just what the Prussians were not expecting. 
Judging France weaker than she was and encouraged by the 
surrender of Longwy and Verdun, they were disconcerted at the 
first resistance. Although Brunswick was master of the road to 
Châlons, he was unwilling to advance upon it after the clash 
at Valmy. This was a mediocre affair in itself since there 
were not eight hundred men hors de combat on each side, but 
it was big with consequences. The Prussians having found the 
task harder than they had expected, having counted on a mili- 
tary promenade, made no further advances. They did not care 
to be detained in France while Austria and Russia divided 
Poland between themselves. It was sufficient for them 
that the Revolution should be unable to prevent this par- 
tition and such was in fact the case. Moreover, Dumouriez only 
too happy over his success at Valmy, was careful not to pursue 
Brunswick and thus expose his own army, whose weakness he 
knew, to a counter-attack by the enemy. He even proposed 
peace with Prussia and an alliance, which was rejected, against 
the house of Austria. So strong was the illusion in the minds 
of the men of the eighteenth century that the country of Fred- 
erick the Great could be only the friend of France. 

The battle of Valmy took place September 20, 1792. The 
Convention opened on the twenty-first. It immediately pro- 
claimed the Republic. But who was to govern it; which party 
was to be in power? From the first day, the struggle began 
between the Left and the Girondists who had become the Right 
of the new Assembly. Counting on the support of the deputies 
of the departments, they immediately attacked the Jacobins, 
accused them of the usurpations practiced by the Commune of 
Paris and of the September massacres. Louvet demanded the 





THE REVOLUTION 301 


trial of Robespierre and the Septembrists—those guilty of the 
September massacres. The majority did not dare to follow him. 
His friends of the Gironde themselves abandoned him because 
they felt that they lacked the strength for such a reaction. Thus, 
at the beginning, the Girondists committed a serious error; 
they had threatened their former allies, their present enemies 
and they had shown that they had not the means to carry out 
their threat. A month after the opening of the Convention, 
their cause was already lost. The Jacobins, who had begun by 
defending themselves, took the offensive. Themselves accused 
of murder and anarchy, they in turn accused the Girondists. 
The accusation against them had been capital and their reply, 
to save themselves, had to be of the same nature. The accusa- 
tion that they launched was that which the Girondists had used 
against the Constitutional ministers and against the king— 
treason, lack of civic spirit, and complicity with the counter- 
revolutionists. The Gironde had invented the “Austrian Com- 
mittee.” Under similar appearances the crime of federal 
separatism, of an attempt against the Republic, one and indi- 
visible, was trumped up against them. Thus the Jacobins, in 
every way, out-maneuvered the Girondists, held them through 
their fear of not appearing sufficiently republican and shoved 
them from position to position. The trial of Robespierre had 
failed. The reply of the Jacobins was the accusation of Louis 
XVI. Regicide was to be the test of republican sincerity. 
Caught in this trap, the Girondists could not escape. They had 
condemned bloodshed; they were put in the position of having 
to vote for the execution of the king or of rendering themselves 
“suspect.” They avoided neither. Recoiling from the crime, 
they proposed an appeal to the people as a way of escape. Im- 
mediately the rabble, the sections, the galleries, threatened the 
Convention which yielded under the same pressure as had the 
previous Assemblies. They rejected the appeal to the people. 
The Girondists, utterly routed, were divided on the question of 
the death of Louis. They had no leadership; they were no 
longer even united. The death of the king, the stake in this 
battle for power, was voted by 361 out of 721 voters, The 


302 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Duke of Orléans, a Conventionalist of the Left, under the 
name of Philippe Egalité, also voted for it. But even regicide 
itself could no longer save any one. The guillotine was erected 
permanently in the Place de la Révolution (the present Place de 
la Concorde). 

The oratory of these times has given the impression that the 
Convention hurled the king’s head as a challenge to Europe. 
On January 21, 1793, the day of the execution of Louis XVI, 
Austria, Prussia, and Russia were busy dividing up Poland. 
The emotion felt at the various courts was no greater than it 
had been after the execution of Charles I. In truth, the Revo- 
lution had already hurled its most serious challenge—and at 
whom? At England, and it was not the head of the king. 

It has often been asked how the Revolution came to be vic- 
torious; and many explanations have been given which contain 
a part of the truth. The spirit of propaganda, the revolution- 
ary crusade, the tradition of the natural frontiers, the memory 
of the policy of Richelieu, which had always remained powerful, 
and of the nation’s struggle against the house of Austria— 
all of these elements in the moral life of the French people had 
contributed largely to make the Revolution warlike and to fur- 
nish it with motives for annexing populations under the pretext 
of liberating them. However, new as they were at these affairs, 
the members of the Convention were not all ignorant of the 
great laws of European politics. They wished to keep England 
neutral and there was one thing that England would never per- 
mit, that France should be mistress of the Low Countries. How 
had they received the plans of Dumouriez with regard to Bel- 
gium which the victory of Jemmapes had just opened to him? 
Here, we must remember that the Revolution was falling deeper 
and deeper into financial distress and that it was being crushed 
under the rising flood of the assignats. Conquests were a pos- 
sible source of hope. Since the French armies of which Du- 
mouriez had reéstablished the discipline, had delivered the 
Republic from invasion, why should they not deliver it from 
poverty? It was necessary, at any cost, to relieve France from 
her impossible situation, to find, as Cambon said, “a way out in 


THE REVOLUTION 303 


order to diminish the mass of paper money circulating in 
France” and to “raise the credit of the assignats,” by a mort- 
gage which would be guaranteed by “the properties brought un- 
der the trusteeship of the Republic.” This necessity in large 
_ part determined the politicians and the financiers, under pre- 
texts drawn from the revolutionary philosophers, to approve 
the occupation and exploitation of Belgium, in spite of the risk 
of English intervention. They would attempt to turn this 
aside and in the meantime Custine was crossing the Rhine. 
Well received at first by the Rhenish population, which for a 
long time had been friendly to France, Custine roused them 
against her by demanding a large contribution from the town 
of Frankfort. He was soon driven from there by the Prussians. 
Moreover, immediately after the French victory at Jemmapes 
(November 6, 1792), England had decided upon war rather 
than leave France in Belgium. The execution of Louis XVI 
was only her pretext for a war which had become inevitable; 
the English would have cared little about the execution of Louis, 
if the French had not already occupied Antwerp. 

Then the real war, the war between England and France, the 
old war over the Low Countries, began. It was the same under 
the Revolution as under Philip the Fair, the old war involving 
the naval supremacy of Great Britain—as it had been under 
Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI. It was no longer a 
question of a continental war against adversaries like Prussia 
and Austria over whom France could still be successful. The 
old coalition had again found its head and its banker. This 
time England would carry the struggle through to the end, all 
the more determined to liquidate her old account with France 
in that she saw the latter first deprived of her naval forces 
through the Revolution and then left incapable of reconstituting 
them because of her financial distress. One of the least visible 
but most appalling mistakes of the Revolution was that it put 
itself in conflict with the greatest maritime power of the world 
without itself having any fleets or any hope of finding any; 
because a navy, an instrument which demands most careful 
preparation, cannot be improvised. The French fleet had been 


304 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


ruined through anarchy and as Villaret-Joyeuse said, “Patriot- 
ism alone is not sufficient to command ships.” Profiting by this 
unique situation, England would not now abandon the struggle 
until she had won. She was, as always, slow to enter fully into 
action, slow in deciding, and slow in preparing, owing to the 
nature of her parliamentary government. She herself extended 
the duration and seriousness of this war, in that only little by 
little did she put into it all her resources, while France, regain- 
ing her old superiority on land, flattered herself with the old 
illusion that a few continental victories would suffice to bring 
England to her knees. The illusion was only to be dispelled at 
Waterloo. 

Many have wished to see in the events of the Revolution, even 
in the Terror itself, profound reasons and a carefully planned 
line of conduct. The extreme confusion of this period shows 
rather that the decisions of the men of the Revolution were de- 
cisions of expediency. This was the case from the time of the 
Constituent Assembly. The truth is that there was the greatest 
confusion in the minds of men. Danton, who has been repre- 
sented as a man of one idea, drifted no less than many others. 
Raised to power by the events of the tenth of August and the 
massacres of September, he was no more capable than the 
Girondists had been of “diking up” the Revolution. He would 
have liked to place himself between the Assembly and the Com- 
mune, between the Gironde and the Jacobins, when the posi- 
tions had already been determined. The Girondists had finally 
discovered that the Commune was the true government of the 
Revolution, and would not admit that the usurped power should 
command all France. To this the Jacobins replied that in 
rousing the departments against Paris, the Gironde rendered 
itself guilty of “federalism,” that it tended to disrupt the unity 
of the Republic, that it was betraying the nation, Danton had 
become too deeply compromised with the Commune, he had too 
great need of it in case he should have to render account for the 
shedding of blood, to work for its overthrow. But the Girond- 
ists would perish if they did not overthrow it. By entering 
the government, Danton in his turn placed himself in an im- 


THE REVOLUTION 305 


possible position. He has been admired for having upheld the 
institution of the revolutionary tribunal which was to regulate 
and moderate the Terror. Rather he gave it its instrument; he 
perfected it, very much as Doctor Guillotin had perfected the 
ax of the executioner. After the Terror had been legalized, 
it remained none the less in the hands of the violent. And it 
lacked only one more formality, this also legal, to make it pos- 
sible for Robespierre and his friends to bring before it their 
political enemies, confounded with traitors, counter-revolution- 
ists and the fomenters of anarchy, whom the revolutionary 
tribunal was to punish. This formality was that the members 
of the Convention should cease to be inviolable. 

In April, 1793, the Convention had already drawn from 
its numbers the Committee of Public Safety, to control the 
ministers, that is, to govern. In order that the controllers 
should in turn be controlled, according to the logic of terrorism, 
the members of the Convention, on Marat’s proposition, had 
renounced their inviolability. The revolutionists were then 
free to guillotine each other. 

Marat, a “disinterested fanatic,’ was the most influential 
_ man of the Revolution, the one who most consistently guided it 
_ from without, because he had the instincts of the demagogue, 
the gift of divining the popular passions and the talent to ex- 
press the hatreds and suspicions of the crowd in the manner 
in which they felt them. Marat, a writer and an agitator, was 
a terrible artist of demagogy. He inspired disgust even in 
Robespierre himself, but from the beginning he was indispen- 
sable to the progress of the Revolution whose development—and 
this is a key which we must not lose—depended upon a chronic 
agitation of the Parisian population and the possibility of pro- 
voking riots at any moment. Camille Desmoulins was right 
when he said that “you could not go further than the opinions 
of Marat.” The progress of the Revolution will not end even on 
the day when Charlotte Corday kills the monster, but it will 
be appreciably retarded. Freed of Marat’s presence, Robes- 
pierre, having been the head of the government in his turn, will 
have less trouble in opposing the subordinate leaders like 


306 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Hébert and in so far will himself render possible the reaction of 
Thermidor. 

While waiting, the Girondists had realized that, in order to 
save their own heads, they must strike at the man through whom 
the Revolution was making common cause with anarchy and was 
finding in it, at every critical juncture, its propelling force. 
One of their most fatal illusions which Danton seems to have 
shared was that the revolutionary tribunal would serve to rid 
them of Marat—to obtain from the Assembly a formal accusa- 
tion against him. But bringing him to trial before Fouquier- 
Tinville and the Parisian jurors, was equivalent to having him 
judged by himself. Marat’s acquittal was a triumph and the 
Girondists received this new blow from the Extreme Left. 

April, 1793, and the two months which followed were as bad 
for them as for the Republic. Things had never been so serious. 
Dumouriez had failed in Holland, lost Belgium, and then emi- 
grated as La Fayette had done, after having delivered the com- 
missioners of the Convention over to the Austrians. The de- 
fection of the victor of Valmy and Jemmapes signified a lack 
of confidence that might become serious. It redoubled the ardor 
of the political strife at Paris because, Danton having been in 
touch with Dumouriez, the Girondists accused him of treason. 
Danton violently defended himself. But if his words were bold, 
his thoughts were hesitant. He was troubled, uncertain, as a 
man who bore on his conscience the September massacres. The 
accusation launched against him had the effect of driving him 
over to the Left. He took sides against the Girondists when the 
latter, frightened by the acquittal of Marat, turned their at- 
tack upon the Commune of Paris. Always able to rally a 
majority of the Convention when they invoked respect for order, 
they had been able to impose a committee of surveillance upon 
the Jacobin municipality. The reply of the Jacobins was in 
conformity with the process which had never failed to succeed 
in the revolutionary period: a violent campaign by the clubs 
and the press against the Gironde, which was accused of favor- 
ing federalism and royalty. This campaign was accompanied 
by a vigorous excitation of the Parisian population which was 


THE REVOLUTION 307 


kept in a continual state of nervousness by the growing deprecia- 
tion of the assignats, by the uncertain arrival of food caused 
by the law of the maximum, and the fear of famine. “Famine,” 
said Lanjuinais, “remained the lever of the insurrections.” 
After this careful preparation, the Commune called out the 
ordinary rioting troops. “General” Henriot, at the head of 
the most advanced seditions of the national guard, surrounded 
the Convention, turned his cannon upon it, prevented the depu- 
ties from leaving, proved to them that they were at the mercy of 
the Commune, and then demanded the formal accusation of the 
Girondists. Robespierre had managed the whole affair and 
Danton had at least consented. May 31, 1793, was as humiliat- 
ing for the Girondists and the Assembly as they had made 
June 30, 1792 for the king and the monarchy. 

By this use of force, the Jacobins, already masters of Paris, 
became masters of the government also, which from that time 
was composed of the Committee of Public Safety and of the 
Commune. The Girondists, with three or four exceptions, fled 
and tried in vain to arouse the departments. Most of them per- 
ished by suicide or on the scaffold. In October the trial of the 
Girondists, deliberate and willful authors of the war with Aus- 
tria and with Europe, coincided with the execution of Marie 
Antoinette, “the Austrian.” Philippe Egalité, Mme. Roland, 
the former Mayor Bailly, all the important actors of the 
drama who had contrived the misfortune of others and of them- 
selves fell under the knife of the guillotine in rapid succession. 

As a result of a more and more adroit use of patience and 
demagogy, and above all, thanks to the manipulation of the 
clubs and riots, Robespierre was victorious. After May thirty- 
first, he was the master and all those who were passing and 
were still to pass through the hands of the executioners before 
he himself should follow them, had contributed to bring him 
into power. But in what state did he find France! Again her 
frontiers were open to invasion. In the spring the forced en- 
rollment of three hundred thousand men, in addition to the 
religious war, and the execution of Louis XVI definitely 
aroused La Vendée which did not understand how conscription 


308 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


and the barracks could be conquests of liberty. Lyons and 
’ Marseilles were in revolt against the Jacobins. To escape them, 
Toulon opened her port to the English. In these astounding 
conditions, France had no government but that of the Terror. 
By the demagogical attitude which he had taken against con- 
spirators and traitors, and by his propensity to find these every- 
where, Robespierre personified war without quarter. Pursuit 
of treason was the justification of the Terror. It was conven- 
ient for the dictator to accuse his antagonists, and those who 
bore him a grudge, of ‘“‘defeatism.” He thus made his dictator- 
ship appear synonymous with public safety. It had been 
created by the war which the Girondists had made upon Austria 
when France had no government strong enough to wage it. 
Brissot and his friends had filled their cups with blood. There 
was nothing left but to drink it. 

It is thus that in spite of its atrocious follies and its ignoble 
agents, the Terror became national. It made France tense in 
one of her most critical periods. It helped to save her or rather 
to defer the hour of disaster that was to return at the end of 
the Directory and which Napoleon was to stave off a little 
longer, until he himself was conquered. It is very probable that 
the Republic would have succumbed in the summer of 1793 and 
that the territory of France would have been invaded if Eng- 
land had been ready, if she had supported the insurgents of La 
Vendée and if Prussia, Austria and Russia had not still been 
engaged in cutting up Poland and if they had not been distracted 
and divided by the Eastern question. Without this respite, the 
Revolution would not have been able to crush its enemies 
within. The effects of the military reorganization to which 
Carnot was devoting himself, could not have made itself felt 
and the levy en masse would have been merely the levy of a 
rabble incapable of resisting a coalition. 

Desperate as it was in July 1793, the situation was reéstab- 
lished in October by the victory of Wattignies which broke the 
blockade of the northern frontier. The insurrection in La Ven- 
dée subsided and that at Lyons was put down. In December La 
Vendée was definitively conquered and Bonaparte appeared 


THE REVOLUTION 309 


upon the horizon through the recapture of Toulon. Alsace was 
delivered and Belgium was again open to France. Certain his- 
torians have wondered why the Revolution did not, at that mo- 
ment, become more moderate. They excuse the Terror as long 
as the “country was in danger.” Then they recoil in amazed 
horror at its excesses. A wider view of the necessities with 
which Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety found 
themselves confronted, will explain the continuation of terror- 
ism. We forget that the state of the finances was becoming 
worse and worse; the abyss was deepened still more by the 
enormous military expenditures. Money must be had at any 
cost; war had to feed war and it had become a system “to con- 
quer the enemy and live at his expense,” to conquer in order to 
enrich the Republic. As long as war continued, the Terror had 
to continue also. But it served another purpose now; it was 
an instrument of confiscation. It was a means of seizing the 
property of the émigrés, of despoiling the suspects and the rich, 
in the illusion which had lasted since the Constituent Assembly, 
that there would finally be furnished a solid guaranty for the 
assignats. 

The Terror could not be stopped at the raising of a hand. 
Robespierre was brought to the point of acting like a leader. 
He began to be afraid of anarchy abroad. He was the first who 
dared to strike a blow at the Parisian rabble in the person of 
_ Hébert and his followers. Immediately after it was Danton 
and the Dantonists, the “weaklings,’’ those who were leaning 
towards a premature peace, whom he sent to the guillotine. 
The exaltation of Robespierre and his pretentious, mystical 
jargon need not deceive us. Behind it all there is to be noted 
the insistence with which at each of the great political trials, 
he spoke of the traitors, the English agents, of the rôle of the 
bankers, of the foreign suspects like Anacharsis Clootz, who 
had been raising their heads ever since the beginning of the 
Revolution. This incongruous, disquieting society which he 
says he is “cleaning up” without pity but perhaps sometimes 
with discernment, he sent to the guillotine side by side with the 
noblest and best of France, pell mell with persons who were in- 


310 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


nocent, with scholars, and with poets. Robespierre had styled 
himself “the incorruptible.”” He implied therefore that there 
had been corruption. It brings to mind the tales of money, of 
police, of spies which are the ordinary accompaniments of all 
revolutionary movements. 

In April, 1794, the Terror still existed. Danton had been 
suppressed as well as Camille Desmoulins and his wife, Lucile. 
The men of the Revolution had been devouring each other. 
Only the prudent and the skillful had escaped; those who, as 
Sieyés said, had a talent for living. But by dint of purifying 
the Revolution, Robespierre had exhausted its strength. He 
himself and Jacobism are the essence of the Revolution. One 
could not go beyond the opinions of Marat. As a revolutionary 
character Robespierre also represents a limit. Since the time 
of the Constituent Assembly he had been increasing his de- 
mands, which the political principle, in force since 1789, had 
favored—to have no enemies on the Left. And now what were 
his ideas? What did he want? Whither was he going? He did 
not know himself. Strange projects were accredited to this man 
and the court of Vienna began to take an interest in “Monsieur 
de Robespierre.” However, he instituted nothing but the 
ridiculous “Fête of the Supreme Being” while the guillotine 
reaping its victims day by day, thinned the ranks of the As- 
sembly, even picking its victims among his radical associates. 
Scarcely any one remained save those who through fear had 
said yes to everything. A supreme fear gave them the courage 
of despair. Robespierre felt that he was losing his hold on the 
Convention and he wished to use the ordinary method which up 
to that time had never failed, namely the intervention of the 
Commune. On the 9th Thermidor, therefore, this extraordinary 
thing occurred. The members of the Convention who had sur- 
vived were the wisest and cleverest since they had succeeded in 
saving their heads. They perceived what no one had understood 
since August tenth, that the famous “days” were at bottom 
only small local affairs and that with a little method, tact, and 
energy, it would be possible to check the rioters. The Jacobin 
Commune depended upon the sections. To prevent a riot, and to 


THE REVOLUTION 311 


arrest Santerre and Henriot, therefore, it was a question of first 
protecting the menaced quarter by means of some of the moder- 
ate sections, and then of taking the offensive against the rioters. 
It was not sufficient, in order to overthrow Robespierre, just to 
vote an accusation against him. His accusers needed to be sure 
of what would happen outside the Assembly. Tallien and 
Barras took it upon themselves to handle the rioters. They 
succeeded, thanks to a single section, Le Pelletier, which gave 
the signal for resistance. Robespierre, having taken refuge in 
the Hôtel de Ville, understood the mechanism of the Revolution 
too well not to know that he was lost if the rioters and the 
Commune began to give way. He tried to commit suicide but 
failed and the next day was carried bleeding to the scaffold 
(July 27, 28, 1794). 

After the fall of Robespierre, France breathed more easily. 
A strong public opinion demanded and obtained the punishment 
of those whom Chénier called “executioners who had been 
scribbling laws.” The guillotine served once more for the exe- 
cution of the most famous and abominable of the terrorists just 
as the Revolutionary tribunal had served to condemn the very 
men who had created it. But if this reaction was a relief it was 
not a solution. From the beginning, the Revolution had been 
trying to form a government. It had had three or four consti- 
tutions which were not workable and which had hardly even been 
tested. The Terror was a state of madness which left in its 
train only impotence and disgust. From the 9th Thermidor to 
the 18th Brumaire (the two most famous dates of the new 
Republican calendar) the Revolution had sought to form a 
government which should be free and should conform to its 
principles, and it had failed. 

When the moderates of the Convention had, through a final 
purification, rid themselves of Robespierre and his followers, 
the “queue de Robespierre” they were confronted with the 
same difficulties as their predecessors. Financial difficulties had 
increased with the rising flood of the assignats; France was at 
war with her neighbors and there was intense confusion every- 
where within her borders. Many of the French, worn out by 


312 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the anarchy, the misery, and the suffering caused by the de- 
preciation of the paper money, ardently desired order and 
thought it could best be attained by a return to the old monarchy. 
Many, on the other hand, were too much engaged in the Revo- 
lution and had too many interests involved not to fear a return 
to the old régime. This was especially true in the case of those 
responsible for the death of the king, of those who had acquired 
state properties, and of the military. Moreover, Jacobinism was 
far from dead. For five years Revolutionary France had 
struggled to maintain a middle course between royalism and 
terrorism and had succeeded only in continuing the disorders, 
thus preparing for that autocratic government which was to 
arise from its own midst. 

The genesis of the 18th Brumaire is simple. What took 
place after Thermidor? From that time on, the Convention 
knew what measures it must take to avoid the retaliation of 
the Jacobins. On the 12th Germinal and the 1st Prairial, 
rioting began again, but proved only abortive because it no 
longer had leadership or organization, the Commune of Paris 
having been suppressed. However on the ist Prairial a vio- 
lent attack occurred. The mob again invaded the Assembly, 
killed the deputy Féraud and paraded his head on the end of 
a pike. When this insurrection had been put down, thanks to 
the moderate sections, the Thermidorians finally decided to 
adopt the measure which had always daunted the revolution- 
ists. They took away the autonomy of the national guard and 
put it under the direction of a military committee. Political 
influence then began to sway towards the army, a victorious 
army which under General Pichegru had just conquered Hol- 
land in an astoundingly courageous campaign. Whoever had 
the support of the army would be able to control the govern- 
ment. The era of the great generals was beginning. On the 
13th Vendémiaire it was necessary to call Bonaparte and his 
artillery to crush a royalist movement in Paris. On the 18th 
Fructidor, the Directory was to call Augereau. These two 
operations, necessary to safeguard the Revolutionary ideal, were 
the training school for Napoleon’s later coup d’état. 





4 
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THE REVOLUTION 313 


The 18th Fructidor is of special importance in the light of 
what followed because it was the link which united the Revolu- 
tion to the Empire. It is therefore necessary to examine the 
origins of this event, this swing to the Left which was destined 
to prevent both reaction and peace. In 1792 the revolutionists 
had desired war in order to establish their own position. To 
such an extent had the Revolution profited and been nourished 
by its external conflicts, that it could no longer cease waging 
war without imperiling its own existence. It, like Napoleon a 
little later, was caught in the clutches of the war it had itself 
started and there was no turning back, for it had provoked an 
enemy, England, who was determined not to lay down her arms 
until she should be victorious. 

In 1795, after two successful campaigns in Holland and the 
Pyrenees, the Convention had seized the opportunity for con- 
cluding peace with Prussia. In the true spirit of eighteenth 
century diplomacy, the French leaders reluctantly fought 
against this neighboring German state and were ever hoping to 
have it as an ally. The Convention had likewise made peace 
with Spain, the only one of the powers of whom it can be said 
that it entered the struggle to avenge Louis XVI. Prussia had 
gained what she wanted in Poland and she was becoming anxious 
about the projects of Austria and Russia in the East. In order 
to regain her liberty of action in the latter sphere, she had 
signed the treaty of Basle and gave up all interest in the left 
bank of the Rhine, in return for advantageous compensations in 
Germany. The Bourbons of Spain perceived, on their side, 
that they were solely playing into the hands of England and 
allied themselves with republican France in the spirit of the 
former dynastic alliance. The Convention signed this double 
peace alleging that it enabled France to pursue the war with 
greater vigor against her other enemies. Hostilities with Eng- 
land and Austria continued. 

However, the Convention, which had abolished the terrorist 
dictatorship and which had condemned the absurd constitu- 
tion of the Jacobins, found itself obliged to construct a regular 
government and to hold elections. It was probable that these 


314 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


elections, no longer controlled by the Jacobins, would be moder- 
ate if not reactionary and would consequently favor peace. 
The Constitution of the Year III attempted to reconstitute a 
regular executive power by creating a directorate of five mem- 
bers and a balanced legislative power composed of two as- 
semblies or councils, that of the Ancients and that of the Five 
Hundred. In this constitution the wisest provision was that 
which stipulated that the legislative body should be elected only 
by thirds. The old Convention was thus sure of keeping a 
majority for some length of time. It thus avoided sudden re- 
versals of opinion and was free to continue the struggle with 
the enemy even if the first partial elections should show a tend- 
ency in the country towards peace. 

Pitiable as the government of the Directory may have been, 
it is not just to accuse it of having continued the war at a mo- 
ment when the finances were at their worst. This very condi- 
tion persuaded the enemy, that with a little patience, he could 
wreck France. Forty-five million worthless assignats had been 
printed. The Directory decided solemnly to burn the plate 
which was used in printing them, but, finding itself without 
resources, replaced this paper money by another, the territorial 
mandates, which quickly suffered the same decline. If some 
speculators were enriched, the bondholders and the government 
officials were starving. The French soldiers, whose numbers 
were increasing through conscription, were without shoes. The 
general misery helped the socialistic propaganda and the social- 
ist conspiracy of Babeuf. It is therefore natural that the 
Directory should have continued to look upon the war as a means 
of levying contributions upon the enemy and of finding re- 
sources; and also that it should have feared the return after an 
empty-handed peace, of a ragged and famished army and that 
it should have finally approved Bonaparte’s bold plan, the con- 
quest and pillage of Italy. The destruction of the plate of the 
assignats, symbol of the bankruptcy which the Revolution flat- 
tered itself it could avoid, took place on February 19, 1796. On 
the twenty-second, Bonaparte received command of the army of 
the Alps, which he was to lead into those “rich provinces” where 


THE REVOLUTION 315 


it would find “honor, glory, and wealth.” Bonaparte kept his 
word. A campaign marked by a series of victories, Castiglione, 
Arcole, Rivoli, allowed him to accomplish his program. From 
henceforth he will not diverge from it. He will make his battles 
a source of profit. For fifteen years, he will so conduct the war 
that not only will it cost France nothing but, through it, he will 
restore her finances. 

A victorious general, who was furnishing the state with 
money, made himself indispensable and the popularity of 
Bonaparte increased. It is none the less true that many of the 
French were wondering if there was always to be war, con- 
scription, and conquests. It was well-known that the most 
ardent partisans of the war were Jacobins. It was feared that 
the situation which had led to the Terror might be repeated. 
In 1797, at the moment when Austria, driven out of Italy and 
menaced even within her borders, was signing the preliminaries 
of Léoben, the elections had sent to the Councils a new batch of 
moderates who were opposed to the policy of war. Considering 
the state of misery and anarchy in which France found herself 
—with her weak government, the Directory divided and de- 
spised—the continuation of the war seemed, in the eyes of 
reasonable men, absurd, and sure to bring disaster. In their 
opinion France should take advantage of the defeat of Austria 
and the weariness of Pitt. The latter was making overtures for 
peace at Lille and seemed disposed to recognize the conquests 
of the Revolution, Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, the 
Batavian Republic of Holland and the Cisalpine Republic of 
Italy as annexations of the French Republic. One of the 
Directors was of the opinion that this occasion ought not to be 
lost. This was Barthélemy, the negotiator of the treaty of 
Basle, a diplomat of the old régime, a disciple of Vergennes. 
Carnot hesitated, fearing the return of the Bourbons as much 
as a military dictatorship. The three others, Rewbell, La 
Reveillére and Barras (although the last, venal and corrupt, 
was unstable) thought that peace offered more difficulties than 
the war and that the government would either have to cope with 
insoluble problems or that it would be overturned by the reac- 


316 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


tionaries for whom the making of peace would be a triumph. 
They thought also that the authors and beneficiaries of the 
Revolution would have some accounts to render, especially the 
regicides; and they said to themselves, and probably not incor- 
rectly, that the attitude of Pitt would not last; that an England 
leaving France her conquests from the Rhine to the Adige was 
too good to be true; that war would soon break out anew and 
under conditions less favorable to France once the tension was 
relieved. 

The partisans of peace were in the majority in the Councils 
but no organized force was with them. The partisans of the 
war could count upon the Jacobins, the “patriots,” and the 
soldiers. They violently attacked the royalists and the moder- 
ates, confounded with them under the name of the “faction of 
the old frontiers,’ and with the connivance of the young gen- 
erals, caused addresses against the enemies of the Republic to 
be delivered to the army. To deal with the situation, a man with 
a strong hand was needed. Bonaparte sent Augereau to Paris. 
He invaded the council hall accompanied by Rossignol and 
Santerre, returned ghosts of Jacobinism, arrested the deputies 
who were protesting and boasted the day following, the 18th 
Fructidor, that his expedition had been as successful “as an 
opera ballet” (September 4, 1797). 

The moderates had been “‘fructidorized.”” It was a bloodless 
Terror, hardly less cruel than the other, the scaffold being re- 
placed by deportation. Some of the deputies, the Director 
Barthélemy himself, were sent to Guiana with a number of 
priests, many of whom perished. Arrests, proscriptions, perse- 
cutions began again under the influence of the Jacobins whose 
power had been resuscitated by this coup d’état. 

From his “proconsulship of Italy,” General Bonaparte, the 
great favorite of the Directory, watched events. He had ap- 
proved and aided the 18th Fructidor. He profited by it. He 
saw that henceforth the soldier would be the master, that the 
Directory would become unpopular through its violent return to 
the Left, and that the need of a stable government, pretecting 
both people and property, would soon be felt. This government, 


THE REVOLUTION 317 


the restorer of order and authority, leaning for support upon 
men who had no other means of existence than the military pro- 
fession, would also have to preserve the results of the Revolu- 
tion. Bonaparte himself was merely its greatest parvenu. 
Thus he speculated upon the two tendencies between which the 
French were divided. Before Fructidor, General Bonaparte, 
who already was playing politics, was among the most ardent in 
accusing the peace party of compromising the fruit of his vic- 
tories in Italy. After Fructidor, he changed his attitude; he 
signed with Austria the peace of Campo Formio, a peace for the 
sake of policy, which put off the most difficult matters, those 
concerning Germany, to the future Congress of Rastadt. 

If Bonaparte, as early as 1797, had decided on what policy he 
would follow in case circumstances should offer him a political 
role in France, he had more immediate problems to solve. Times 
were hard and one had to live. Generals, like others, were en- 
deavoring, more or less adroitly, to insure themselves against 
the morrow. Dumouriez had already misjudged the situation; 
Pichegru, involved in his intrigues, was to commit suicide. 
Bonaparte had vision and saw correctly. His proconsulship of 
Italy would not last forever. He found something else: an 
Egyptian expedition, a campaign in the Orient—glorious and 
fruitful—a means, of which Frenchmen had thought during the 
whole of the eighteenth century, of striking the English Em. 
pire in India. Hoche had been carried away by projects, al- 
ways fruitless, of landing in Wales and Ireland. These proj- 
ects were not abandoned, but to conquer the English com- 
pletely, it was necessary to try something else. Venturesome 
as it was, Bonaparte’s proposition was accepted by the Direc- 
tory. 

The Egyptian campaign was undertaken with a badly recon- 
structed navy, while the English fleet had become more formid- 
able. Although Bonaparte had the good fortune to land his 
expeditionary forces safely, Nelson shortly after destroyed the 
French fleet at Aboukir (August, 1798). The squadrons of 
Spain and of Holland, allies of the French, were also defeated. 
Bonaparte had conquered Egypt but he was blockaded. Russia 


op ERO HISTORY OF FRANCE 


and Turkey declared war against the Republic. Austria in 
turn broke off the negotiations of Rastadt; she even had the 
French plenipotentiaries assassinated, and entered into a coali- 
tion stronger than the former one by the addition of Russia. 
Affairs then began to go badly for the Directory. To attentive 
observers it was evident that the conquests of the Revolution 
were secured to France by the frailest of attachments; that the 
combination of vassal republics was a house of cards; and that 
this war with Europe, directed by England, was bound to end 
badly for France. Championnet succeeded in getting as far as 
Naples, as in the time of Charles VIII. The Pope was seized 
and carried away to Valence. But insurrections broke out in 
Italy. Suvôroff, together with the Austrians, entered Milan. 
In France these reverses were increasing the unpopularity of 
the Directory, an incapable government which was given over 
to the Jacobins. In June, 1799, a revolt of the Councils undid 
what the coup d’état of Fructidor had accomplished, and reor- 
ganized the Directory without making it any better than it was 
before. On the other hand, reverses were following each other 
in rapid succession. After the defeat of Novi, Italy was lost 
to France. Without the victory of Masséna at Ziirich and 
Brune’s success, which checked the enemy in Holland, the plight 
of France would have been desperate. Confusion reigned in the 
political assemblies and the Directory, forced to oscillate from 
Right to Left, and Left to Right, no longer knew what stand to 
take. Bonaparte, on his side, had just failed in Syria where 
he had been trying to open up a way for the army. The Egyp- 
tian campaign yielded nothing. Informed of the events in 
France, he decided to return; through most extraordinary good 
fortune he evaded the English ships and on October 8, 1799, he 
landed at Fréjus. 

One month later, November 9, 1799, the 18th Brumaire, the 
Directory was overthrown by one of those coups d’état for which 
he had set the model and which every one had come to regard 
as quite ordinary affairs. The Revolution—or rather the 
Revolutionary period properly so called—ended with the admis- 
sion that its leaders were incapable of founding a government. 


CHAPTER XVII 
THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 


Tre coup d’état of Brumaire, far from being directed against 
the Revolution, was destined to save it. On his return from 
Egypt, Bonaparte appeared as the savior for whom every one 
had been looking. Immediately upon his arrival at Fréjus he 
was welcomed with the cry of “Long live the Republic!” He 
journeyed through France as a victor. An ardent republican, 
Baudin, a deputy of the Ardennes, died of joy upon hearing 
of his return. Baudin was one of the authors of the Constitu- 
tion of the Year III; he saw it on the verge of perishing and 
put his hope in the young general who on the 13th Vendémiaire 
and the 18th Fructidor had lent a strong arm to the cause of 
the Revolution. We must not lose sight of the fact that the 
18th Brumaire was organized from within the government it- 
self. Two out of the five directors, Sieyés and Roger-Ducos, 
were for Bonaparte and Sieyés was one of the fathers of the 
Revolution. He was at the head of the Council of the Ancients. 
Lucien Bonaparte presided over the Council of Five Hundred. 
The codperation of these men made it possible to remove the 
legislative body from Paris and to send it to Saint-Cloud, on the 
pretext that it was threatened by a Jacobin movement. Never- 
theless there was violent opposition among the Five Hundred 
who wished to outlaw Napoleon. While he was being sur- 
rounded and threatened with assassination, his grenadiers 
rushed in and parted the groups. Their entrance into the hall 
put to flight the representatives who had treated him as a 
seditious person and a dictator. 

“Bonaparte,” said Thiers, “preserved the ideals of the Revo- 
lution under the form of a monarchy.” As a matter of fact, 


some of the revolutionists and regicides, like Sieyés, felt that it 
319 


320 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


had been compromised. Nothing succeeded; no constitution 
could survive; order was not reéstablished. Brune and Masséna 
had barely managed to halt the Coalition by a hair’s breadth and 
no one knew whether the respite would be a matter of months 
or weeks. Such a state of affairs could not be prolonged with- 
out great danger for France and for the Republic, and might 
end in a return to the monarchy or in invasion. Except for 
the royalists and the Jacobins, all of the French, both those 
who desired either the safety of France or the safety of the Re- 
public and those who desired the safety of both, were in accord 
in seeking the aid of the victorious general. The directors had 
already thought of Joubert. In every way, the Republic was 
abdicating. Anarchy, financial ruin, the possibility of military 
disaster—this was what France had to face. As an example 
of the disorder which reigned everywhere, we have only to 
note that no one in the war office even knew the number of 
soldiers under arms. These soldiers, “naked and starving,” 
after having lived at the expense of the enemy, were now 
crowding back into France and were beginning to exercise their 
requisitioning right upon the French themselves. Thus, ten 
years after 1789, the situation was no longer possible. ‘Those 
who had profited by the Revolution, especially those who had 
bought the national lands, were among the most anxious. 
Every one became conservative. Some had long been weary 
of the disorders and excesses. Others wished to consolidate 
the new régime, and understood the necessity of a return to 
authority and order. Disgust and anxiety delivered France into 
Bonaparte’s hands. But his dictatorship arose out of the very 
principles of the Revolution itself which had ended by seeking 
refuge in personal power. 

Some historians have tried to explain Bonaparte by referring 
to his Corsican and Italian origin; but, entirely French by edu- 
cation, he was above all else a man of the eighteenth century. 
He had its ideas, its turn of phrase; he liked declamation and 
the style of Rousseau, maxims and the style of Chamfort. In 
his monologues, written at Saint Helena what do we always 
find? The man who was twenty years old in 1789. Formed 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 321 


under the old régime, he himself recognized what he owed to 
those who had taught him. He spoke with gratitude of his 
masters at the military academy. Like others of his time, he 
rather continued the old ideas and customs than introduced 
new ones. He belongs so much to his own time that we are 
sometimes astonished, as for instance in his cult of Frederick 
IT, the hero who had preceded him and whom he had effaced in 
the memory of Europeans. As for the Revolution, whose 
language he spoke and to whose philosophy he subscribed, he 
went through it as a soldier who had his career to make, quick 
to seize the opportunities that it offered him. He served all 
parties without belonging to any. On the tenth of August, the 
resignation of Louis XV angered him because he himself had a 
gift for commanding and a sense for authority. An instinct 
for politics, a relish for taking risks, a growing confidence in his 
lucky star, a remarkable aptitude for understanding men and 
their needs, of finding the words and the action which each 
situation demanded—these were the elements of his success. 
And why did this extraordinary fortune end in a catastrophe? 
Because Napoleon Bonaparte was burdened by the heaviest part 
of the revolutionary inheritance, a slave to the war of 1792, a 
slave to its conquests. Like most of his contemporaries, he 
forgot only one thing; England had never permitted and never 
would permit the French to be the masters of the Low Coun- 
tries. To drive them out, no effort would be too costly for her. 
The Revolution had done nothing to change this long established 
law and the coming of Napoleon did not change it. 

At first everything was easy. France threw herself into the 
arms of this extraordinary man who seemed to divine her de- 
sires. Circumstances conspired with his prestige and his ad- 
dress to give him undivided power. According to revolutionary 
tradition the Directory had “purged” itself, and having need 
of the name and sword of Bonaparte for this purgation, Sieyés 
and Roger-Ducos had made a place for him with themselves. 
From five directors, the government passed into the hands of 
three consuls. Immediately General Bonaparte became First 
Consul, the only consul. It was he who governed and who 


322 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


reassured those committed to the Revolution as well as the 
peaceable mass of the population. He wiped out the remains of 
Jacobinism, the compulsory progressive tax, and the hateful law 
of hostages. He restored worship in the churches and pacified 
the Vendée by stopping the religious persecutions. He prom- 
ised to end the frightful misery caused by the assignats, the 
misery which the Directory in spite of its promises had been 
powerless to cure. The Revolution, born of the fear of a deficit, 
had opened a gulf. The destruction of the paper money had 
been no remedy. For the first time it was understood that a 
reorganization of the finances and a return to prosperity de- 
pended upon political reorganization and a strong government. 
Under the old régime the finances had been only embarrassed 
by the resistance of special interests defended by the parlia- 
ments. They had been ruined by revolutionary demagogy. A 
strong authority was necessary to reéstablish them. Without 
delay Bonaparte called in an old official of the monarchy, 
Gaudin, later Duke de Gaéte, who founded the direct taxes on 
the model of the twentieths and reéstablished on the model of 
the aides the indirect taxes abolished by the Revolution. 
Without confessing it, the French began to realize that things 
had not been so bad under the old régime and that the worst 
evil was anarchy. 

However, the government which had been formed the day 
after the 18th Brumaire was provisional. According to custom 
one more constitution had to be given to the Republic. 
General Bonaparte waited patiently for the chef d’œuvre which 
Sieyès was preparing. He reserved to himself the privilege of 
making any necessary alterations. Sieyés meditated long over 
it. He conceived a system in which the elections passed through 
a series of siftings—a system which was neither a monarchy 
nor a republic, neither a dictatorship nor a régime of assemblies. 
It was a vast pyramid whose base was the populace, and which 
erew smaller and smaller until it reached the Great Elector, a 
sort of constitutional though not hereditary king who was to be 
subject to recall by a senate. ‘There were besides to be two 
consuls, one for peace and one for war, chosen by the Great 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 328 


Elector. As for the legislative body, it was reduced to a silent 
rôle. It was to reply by yes or no after the Council of State 
and the Tribunate had spoken. The latter, designed to repre- 
sent the opposition, alone had the right to protest. Bonaparte 
examined the system, kept what seemed to him good, ridiculed 
and suppressed the Great Elector, that is the head of the 
pyramid, and replaced him by a First Consul named for ten 
years, which was himself. He had nothing further to do but 
to reduce (while waiting to suppress it in 1807) the independ- 
ent Tribunate and thus from Sieyés’ harmoniously balanced sys- 
tem, the dictatorship pure and simple was born. The two 
consuls whom Bonaparte associated with himself for the sake 
of form, were two men of ripe age, Cambacérés and Lebrun. 
The latter, and this may not have been a chance selection, had 
been secretary to Maupeou under Louis XV, at the time of the 
coup d’état against the parliaments. The rallying of the Catho- 
lics was already nearly accomplished. The rallying of the 
royalists, of whom Napoleon was thinking, would be easier 
with these men to help him. 

The Constitution of the Year VIII, thus made over by the 
First Consul, was approved by three million votes. Many proj- 
ects had already been submitted to the people but never had 
such a large majority been obtained. We may perhaps wonder 
whether France in 1789 did not deceive herself as to her real 
desires and if she had not aspired to authority rather than 
liberty. Napoleon Bonaparte completed the government, of 
which he was the sole master, by institutions which all tended 
to maintain society and property just as the Revolution had 
left them, and to preserve the spirit of the Revolution in the 
laws, but to cast them all in authoritative forms. One would 
have said that the First Consul had kept before his eyes both 
the old régime and the revolutionary democracy in order to 
retain the strong portions of the one and to eliminate the weak- 
nesses of the other. The Revolution had introduced the elec- 
tive system everywhere, in the administration as well as in the 
magistracy and in the police departments; it all but introduced 
it into the army, and it was the cause of the anarchy through 


324 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


which its governments had perished. Bonaparte substituted 
prefects and subprefects for elected committees; that is, he 
reéstablished and multiplied the intendants of the old régime. 
Only, as the Revolution had made a clean sweep of the old 
franchises and liberties as well as of the parliaments which op- 
posed them, the new intendants governed without hindrance in 
the name of the central power. As for the magistracy, Bona- 
parte was careful not to restore to them the independence which 
they had so abused under the monarchy. The Consul Lebrun, 
the former collaborator of Maupeou, could offer many useful 
suggestions in this respect. A system very like that of 1771 
was adopted. The magistrates were appointed by the govern- 
ment and, as a guaranty against their being controlled by it, 
the Judges were appointed for life and could not be removed. 
Thus utilizing the experience gained from the monarchy and 
from the Revolution, together with the remains of both, Bona- 
parte composed the Institutions of the Year VIII. These were 
founded upon the idea of a strong central administration which 
placed the nation in the hand of the state. So convenient was 
the plan of government that all the régimes which followed 
adhered to it. It still exists, hardly modified even as to details. 

Everything was going well for the First Consul. But it was 
necessary to restore not only order in France. She had been 
at war for eight years. It was necessary to restore peace as 
well. The Emperor of Russia, Paul I, dissatisfied with his 
allies, had withdrawn from the struggle. England and Austria 
still remained hostile. Bonaparte made overtures to them to 
lay down their arms. That peace with England was possible, 
so long as the French held the mouth of the Scheldt and the 
English controlled the seas, was a great illusion. Bonaparte 
harbored one other illusion which was responsible for every- 
thing that followed. Pitt rejected his offer. The government 
at Vienna, allied with that at London, having also rejected 
it, Napoleon believed that by a decisive victory over Austria 
he could force England to yield. This error, in which he per- 
sisted until his final overthrow, started here. We must, how- 
ever, remember that the Revolution had made the same mis- 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 325 


take before him. Bonaparte received from it this inheritance 
and this necessity. France would never give up her chief and 
most cherished conquest, Belgium, until she was prostrate un- 
der the knee of her adversary. It was certain suicide for any 
government, born of the Revolution, to renounce it. Bonaparte’s 
hands were therefore tied. And his story 1s that of a man 
seeking an impossible thing, namely, the capitulation of Eng- 
land regarding the annexation of Belgium, a point on which she 
would never yield, so long as France was powerless on the sea. 
Napoleon might overturn the continent; in the end, France 
would be pushed back to within less than her former limits. 

To force peace upon Austria, the First Consul decided upon 
a daring plan. While Moreau was carrying on a successful 
diversion in Germany, he boldly crossed the Alps through the 
Great Saint Bernard Pass, defeated Mélas at Marengo, a dis- 
puted victory in which Desaix fell (June 14, 1800), and once 
more became master of Italy. After some fruitless parleys, one 
more victory, that of Moreau at Hohenlinden in December, was 
necessary to force the emperor, Francis II, to yield. In Feb- 
ruary, 1801, the treaty of Lunéville was signed. Austria gave 
up Italy, recognized all of the French conquests of the Revolu- 
tion and the four associated or rather vassal republics—the 
Bavarian, the Swiss, the Cisalpine, and the Ligurian. The left 
bank of the Rhine became French and was divided into depart- 
ments. This was the triumph of Napoleon and of the Revo- 
lution. For the first time in her history, France had attained 
her so-called “natural” frontiers. The Gaul of Cesar’s time 
was reconstituted. It came as the result of the defeat of the 
traditional enemy, the house of Austria, and it seemed as 
though the republican policy, heir of the anti-Austrian tradi- 
tion, the policy of 1741, were sounder than that of the Bour- 
bons. Already Bonaparte was planning to remake Europe, to 
reassemble the still divided people, the Germans and the Ital- 
ians, and to create in place of the old historical divisions, some 
new “natural” states, of which he was to be the head. He 
wished to abolish everything that was “gothic,” everything that 
the treaty of Westphalia had been designed to preserve, lest 


326 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the nationalities should band together against France and es- 
pecially lest Germany should become unified. To sweep away 
the old institutions without as well as within—that was the 
program of the First Consul. It was an attempt to realize a 
dream of a universal republic under the presidency of the 
French people. It was also one of the dreams of the Revolu- 
tion. We find the origin of it in the speeches of its orators 
as well as in the work of the publicists of the eighteenth century 
of whom Bonaparte was the spiritual heir. No one can say 
what would have become of this system, in which France was 
to have first place, if England had been defeated. But England 
was not. And the system, having destroyed the security and 
safeguards of France, was very soon to turn back against the 
French themselves. 

Austria had signed the treaty of Lunéville in the same 
trafficking spirit in which she had already, together with 
Prussia and Russia, divided Poland. Perceiving that times 
had changed, she herself put up the old Germanic Empire at 
auction, divided the spoils with France, and sacrificed the Ger- 
man princes in order to fortify herself by certain annexations 
of territory which would enable her later to resume the war. In 
the same calculating spirit, England, who alone still remained 
hostile, entered in her turn into negotiations with the First 
Consul the following year. 

Everything that happened in 1801 goes to prove that Eng- 
land, deprived of allies, could make no headway against France 
on the continent, but that by sea, Bonaparte was powerless to 
touch her. If he had ever had the opportunity to succeed, it 
was however at that very moment. The ships and ports of 
Spain and Holland were at the disposition of France; Russia 
was friendly; and the Scandinavian countries, united in a 
League of Neutrals, were keeping the Baltic closed to England’s 
commerce. From these elements, it would have been possible 
to realize great results, if the French navy, which had been 
ruined by the Revolution, had been refitted. But it was not. 
What remained of it had been put hors de combat, together with 
the Spanish and Dutch ships; Russia withdrew her support 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 327 


after the mysterious assassination of Paul I; and the bombard- 
ment of Copenhagen dispersed the League of Neutrals. Al- 
though the First Consul succeeded in obtaining the peace of 
Amiens, it was only by craft and calculation. He knew that 
England was tired of the war and of its great expense. By re 
suming, ostensibly, the plan of landing on English soil and 
invading Great Britain, preparations for which had already been 
made in 1797, he frightened the English public and, negotia- 
tions having been offered, he directed them towards a compro- 
mise which made the peace of Amiens very similar to that of 
Lunéville. Just as he had compensated Austria at the expense 
of the German princes, he compensated England at the expense 
of the French allies. Ceylon was taken from Holland and 
Trinidad from Spain. By this transaction, through which 
France also gave up Egypt which had been lost to her since 
communication by sea had been cut, the maritime and colonial 
supremacy of England was increased. The treaty of Amiens 
(March, 1802) was for her to a great extent a retaliation for 
the treaty of Versailles of 1783. 

A peace concluded under such conditions could be no more 
than atruce. In spite of Pitt’s overthrow, the dominating ideas 
of English politics were the same. In a country where public 
opinion carried much weight, the government had yielded to 
internal difficulties and to the discontent of the merchants who 
attributed the closing of the continental markets to the pro- 
longation of the war. When, after a few months, the English 
business men realized that these markets were closed to them 
because France, with Belgium and Holland, held the mouth of 
the Scheldt, the war was speedily resumed. 

France, however, after the treaty of Amiens believed that the 
peace would be lasting. The First Consul himself shared this 
belief. He worked to create a durable state of affairs; he or- 
ganized the country and its conquests in the same spirit that he 
had shown from the beginning of his rise to power. As we have 
seen in other epochs of French history, it was necessary to re- 
pair what a long anarchy had destroyed. On that score, the re- 
building of the roads alone showed the extent of the damage that 


328 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


had been accumulating and the task that was to be accomplished. 
During this work of restoration, similar to that which the mon- 
archy so many times in the course of centuries had had to un- 
dertake, Bonaparte gradually turned his back upon the Revo- 
lution. In this rôle which Charles V or Henry IV had played 
before him, certain monarchie sentiments and ideas were form- 
ing in the mind of the First Consul. At one time the royalists 
thought that he was considering recalling the Bourbons. Louis 
XVIII, from his exile, wrote him a letter to which he replied 
in such terms, however, as to leave no illusions on that subject. 
If he was thinking of a monarchy, it was for himself alone. A 
plot of some of the Jacobins to assassinate him had increased his 
horror of the revolutionists. A short time later, in December, 
1800, he had barely escaped the explosion of a bomb in the rue 
Saint-Nicaise. The terrorists and the Septembrists were accused 
of this crime and more than a hundred names of former members 
of the Convention and the Commune were inscribed on a pro- 
scription list. Fouché, the minister of police, soon discovered 
that the authors of the plot were royalists this time, agents of the 
irreconcilable Georges Cadoudal. They were executed but the 
policy of the First Consul was not changed. He then prepared 
for the official reéstablishment of the Catholic religion, in spite 
of the difficulties which he encountered and in spite of the pro- 
tests of the military party itself, for religious passions had 
been the most violent of the Revolution. On July 15, 1801, he 
succeeded in signing a concordat with Pius VII and Cardinal 
Consalvi. Thus at the time of the peace of Amiens everything 
was conspiring to restore tranquillity and prosperity in France. 
The popularity of the First Consul was so great that he was 
regarded as indispensable and the threats against his life only 
tended to increase his prestige. 

In the meantime, with the astonishing faculty which France 
possesses for rising from her ruins as soon as order is estab- 
lished, wealth began to appear, business and industry were 
flourishing, the national finances themselves were coming back 
to a sound state. The unfortunate bondholders, who had been 
waiting since 1789 for reimbursement of their loans, payment 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 329 


of their claims against the state, and who had seen nothing but 
continued bankruptcy, at last began to receive some of their 
money, though at a great reduction. The Directory had prom- 
ised to recognize a third of their interest, the “consolidated 
third” which had been used to disguise the government’s finan- 
cial embarrassment. It was only under the Consulate that even 
this promise was fulfilled. Thus, through a great sacrifice on 
the part of the capitalists, the bitter conflict ended which un- 
der the old régime had brought them to grips with the state and 
had been one of the causes of the Revolution. 

In the midst of this grandeur and prosperity the First Consul 
had, however, one anxiety, and it was a legitimate one. After 
all, his power lacked a solid foundation. He possessed it for 
_ ten years; three of them had passed, and the Constitution of 
Sieyés, even revised and corrected, was not very reassuring for 
the stability of the régime. A lively opposition had already 
manifested itself in the Tribunate and had not taken kindly to 
any of the projects which Bonaparte had most at heart, the 
Concordat, the formation of the Legion of Honor, and the Civil 
Code. This opposition would become more dangerous with 
time and in proportion as the end of the ten-year term ap- 
proached. It was clear that, just as under the Directory, France 
would again oscillate between the royalists and the Jacobins 
and that there would be a return of agitation and anarchy. To 
establish the new régime firmly, the elimination of the ob- 
jectors, an attenuated form of the purgations of the Revolution- 
ary period, would not suffice. It was naturally desirable to give 
this régime the benefit of a reasonable tenure of office in order 
that the power of the government might be less liable to be 
contested. Thus arose the idea of reéstablishing the monarchy 
in favor of the First Consul. He himself dissimulated his de- 
sires and ambitions. He asked for nothing, he merely allowed 
his friends to act. After the triumph of the peace of Amiens 
they proposed to present him with a national reward, but the 
senate only voted another period of ten years. It was, in spite 
of everything, a discomfiture. Then Cambacérés thought of 
submitting to the people the question as to whether or not 


330 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Napoleon Bonaparte, (his first name was beginning to appear 
officially) should be named First Consul for life, and three 
and a half million votes against less than ten thousand re- 
sponded in the affirmative. The Constitution was revised in 
this sense and the First Consul received besides the right to 
choose his successor (August, 1802). Although he had as yet 
no children, there was nothing to prevent his son, in case he 
should have one, from being his successor. 

Thus the hereditary monarchy was on the point of being 
reéstablished after so many vows never to return to royalty. 
This movement was brought about in the most natural manner 
in the world, and there remained in France such an insignifi- 
cant number of doctrinary republicans that there was no fear 
of resistance. It needed only the right circumstances for Bona- 
parte to take one more step and assume that title of emperor 
of which he was now dreaming and which was pleasing to the 
French because it evoked the memory of ancient Rome, and 
corresponded to the extent of their conquests. It would, how- 
ever, be as false as unjust to attribute to the First Consul the 
idea that war was necessary to arrive at supreme power. It 
would be no less so to attribute to him the ambition to dominate 
all Europe. As we shall see, the Empire was founded in quite 
a different manner. As soon as he had been made consul for 
life, all the sovereigns looked upon Bonaparte as one of them- 
selves. They saw him “mount step by step towards the throne,” 
every one accepted his elevation and the European monarchies, 
showing once more how little they cared for the cause of the 
Bourbons, bowed before this formidable power. They sought 
only to conciliate his good will and, to the best of their inter- 
ests, adapted themselves to a situation which they could not 
change. 

In 1802 and 1803 the policy of the First Consul tended only 
to the pacific consolidation and organization of Europe into the 
new form which ten years of war had imposed upon her. When 
he had himself proclaimed president of the Cisalpine or Italian 
Republic, whose center was Milan, and when he annexed Pied- 
mont to France, not one soul protested because according to 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 331 


the ancient custom, every one had received compensations. 
Austria herself consented because she had Venice. This prin- 
ciple of compensations, in keeping with the treaty of Lunéville, 
was applied to Germany, and the revision of 1803, by sup- 
pressing a large number of ecclesiastic principalities and free 
towns, prepared for the concentration and unity of that country. 
Catholic Austria no more hesitated to receive from the heir of 
the Revolution the spoils of episcopal princes, than liberal and 
Protestant Prussia did to take from the same hand the inde 
pendent cities. This simplification of the German chaos, which 
began the destruction of the treaty of Westphalia, and which 
reserved a great rôle for Prussia, was to have fatal conse- 
quences for France because it increased the power of the 
stronger elements at the expense of the weaker. Napoleon no 
more thought of a possible return blow than of the danger of 
bringing together the scattered members of the Germanic na- 
tions. This transaction implied on the part of Napoleon a 
belief in the stability of European affairs. Still more signifi- 
cant was his preoccupation with restoring her colonies to 
France. It shows his confidence in the solidity of the treaty of 
Amiens. He had obliged France’s ally, Spain, to cede back to 
her Louisiana in exchange for Etruria which was transformed 
into a kingdom for an infanta of Spain. He undertook to 
reconquer Santo Domingo, to-day Haiti, the jewel of the An- 
tilles, which for so long had furnished France with sugar and 
coffee and which under the Revolution, after a period of anarchy 
and terrible massacres, had passed into the hands of the blacks. 
All these projects bear witness to but one plan, that of installing 
himself in peace, and of enjoying the immense acquisitions 
which France had received. 

But it was completely to misunderstand England to imagine 
that she would resign herself to allowing France to build up a 
colonial empire, and to reappear upon the seas as the possessor 
of the most beautiful coasts and the finest harbors from Rotter- 
dam to Genoa. As soon as France had a navy, and she was 
working to rebuild one, she would become a formidable com- 
petitor. One would think, and it was what the French govern- 


332 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


ment did not fail to repeat, that these reasons and these fears 
would have prevented England from signing the peace of 
Amiens, and that nothing had changed since 1802. What had 
changed was the disposition of the English people, especially 
of the merchants who perceived that the growth of France 
had taken away from them a vast clientèle in Europe. Unem- 
ployment, that old nightmare of the English, appeared again 
and terrified them, while the politicians, of whom Pitt remained 
the leader, were determined never to allow this expansion of 
France. They profited by this state of mind to bring pressure 
upon the Addington ministry and, seeking a pretext for a break 
and for war, they prevented the evacuation of Malta, although 
by the treaty of Amiens they were bound to it. For several 
months the affair of Malta gave rise to stormy negotiations. 
The First Consul, to whom the renewal of hostilities now seemed 
inevitable, would have liked at least to defer them. In agree- 
ment with Talleyrand, his minister of foreign affairs, he offered 
several compromises. The British government remained ob- 
durate; it had taken its stand. Even if Malta were ceded, an 
act that would open a breach in the treaty of Amiens, the con- 
flict would be renewed on some other pretext. In May, 1803, 
the rupture took place. 

We are touching here on the chain of circumstances which 
was to make the establishment of the Empire possible. France 
and England were in a state of war but without means of 
reaching each other. The French coasts were being uselessly 
cannonaded and the First Consul, taking up again the project 
that had already been twice abandoned, of invading England 
and transporting an army thither by means of flotillas of flat 
boats, formed a camp at Boulogne. These preparations re- 
quired time; meanwhile the struggle began with the ordinary 
weapons. ‘Those royalists who remained unreconciled received 
encouragement and subsidies from London. Georges Cadoudal 
landed in France and in an agreement with General Pichegru 
plotted to kill Napoleon. He even succeeded in winning over 
another general who was jealous of Bonaparte, the illustrious 
Moreau. This conspiracy was discovered, and it profoundly 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 333 


irritated the First Consul. It also enlightened him. He com- 
plained openly of the ingratitude of the émigrés, assumed a 
republican turn of speech, and let it be understood that there 
was a desire to strike at the Revolution through his person. 
He even conceived an idea which was just the opposite of the 
policy that he had hitherto followed. The conspirators had 
all declared that a prince was to join them, and the First Con- 
sul decided to set an example. Although on every occasion he 
had expressed his horror at the execution of Louis XVI, it was 
to the equivalent of regicide that he resorted in his turn, to give 
his throne a republican baptism of blood. Although the prince 
announced by the conspirators did not appear, Napoleon never- 
theless did not wish to abandon the plan he had made. The 
young Prince de Condé, Duke d’Enghien, was in Baden at 
Ettenheim just across the frontier. He had him seized, and 
after a mock trial had him led out and shot. 

This crime was certainly not necessary to enable Napoleon 
to become emperor. The hereditary monarchy would be his 
maturally by virtue of the same conditions that had already 
made him consul for life. But the attempt at assassination 
by means of an infernal machine had aided the successes of 
the first plebiscite. The last step was taken, thanks to the 
conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal and Pichegru. Observing the 
general revival of the monarchic idea in France, the royalists 
thought that the person of the First Consul was the only ob- 
stacle in the way of a restoration. In order that the way might 
be clear for the Bourbons, it was necessary to do away with him. 
Napoleon having escaped the conspirators, the danger that he 
had run only served his cause. It began to be believed that the 
consulship for life was precarious and that a form of govern- 
ment liable to perish with its chief was not secure enough. 
Bonaparte might disappear overnight, but a Napoleonic dynasty 
would survive him and continue the government. Therefore 
this man whom his enemies, who were also the enemies of the 
Revolution, wished to destroy, “had,” said Thiers, “to be made 
king or emperor, so that heredity, added to his power, would 
assure natural and immediate successors and violence against 


304 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


his person having become useless, there would be less tempta- 
tion to commit it. To place the crown on this precious and 
sacred head, upon which reposed the destiny of France, was to 
provide a buckler which would protect her against the blows of 
her enemies. In protecting him, France would be protecting 
all the interests born of the Revolution; she would save from 
a bloody reaction the men compromised by their own mistakes 
(the Jacobins and royalists). She would conserve their property 
to those who had purchased the national domains; their grades 
to the military; their positions to all the members of the govern- 
ment and to herself, a régime of equality, justice, and grandeur 
which she had acquired.”” Conservation came to be the leading 
idea. The Revolution had become conservative of itself and of 
its results. In order to save itself, to last, it had resorted, on 
the 18th Brumaire, to personal power. It now resorted to the 
hereditary monarchy. To accomplish this last step, Napoleon 
had calculated that the execution of the Duke d’Enghien would 
be useful because it would remove the last republican scruples 
and would act as a guaranty to those who had been most com- 
promised in the revolutionary excesses and who would rejoice 
“to see General Bonaparte separated from the Bourbons by a 
trench filled with royal blood.” 

To a former revolutionary, known for the vigor of his 
opinions, the tribune Curée was delegated the task of propos- 
ing the establishment of the Empire. There was but one de- 
clared opponent. This was Carnot who, however, was after- 
wards won over. A few manifestations by the electoral col- 
leges and a few addresses to the army paved the way for the 
operation. After an unanimous vote of the senate a second 
plebiscite ratified, by millions of votes, the third change made 
in the Constitution of Sieyès. And although from this Consti- 
tution there had arisen a sovereign far more absolute than any 
of her kings, the country still solemnly vowed never to recall 
the Bourbons to the throne. Thus ended the movement which 
had so rapidly led France back towards monarchy and which 
Thiers sums up in striking terms, “From five directors, named 
for five years, the country passed to the idea of three consuls 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 335 


appointed for ten years, and from the idea of three consuls to 
that of one supreme consul and he, appointed for life. Once 
started on such a path it was impossible to stop until the last 
step had been taken, that is, until they had come back to the 
idea of hereditary power.” This return was not difficult for 
the French. According to Thiers, who is illuminating in this 
part of his history, although it had taken several generations 
after Cæsar’s time to accustom the Romans to the idea of a 
monarchie power, “So many precautions were not necessary in 
France for a people who had been accustomed for twelve cen- 
turies to a monarchy and only ten years to a republic.” 

The Empire was proclaimed May 18, 1804, and the name 
of emperor was chosen because that of king inseparably con- 
nected with the Bourbons. Furthermore, this title seemed more 
august, more military, more novel, while at the same time it 
evoked imperishable memories. Up to this time, the emperor 
had always been Germanic. To transfer the imperial title to 
France was to bear witness to the defeat of the Hapsburgs, 
who recognized this soldier of fortune as Emperor of the West 
and would soon content themselves with the title of Emperor 
of Austria. It also meant restoring to France the scepter which 
Charlemagne had borne. Like Charlemagne also, Napoleon 
wished to be crowned by the Pope and not at Rome but at 
Paris. Pius VII after some hesitation, acceded to his wish 
and on December second, at Notre Dame, took place the extraor- 
dinary spectacle of the coronation by which the soldier of the 
Revolution became the anointed of the Lord. To those who 
had been disturbed by the Concordat and who had been even 
more frightened by this apparent subordination to the papacy, 
Napoleon replied that he was protecting the new régime from 
all religious opposition and was rather attaching the Church 
to the government than the government to the Church. This 
measure was legitimatizing the Empire, so he said, in the eyes of 
all the Catholics in the world and at one stroke was making 
him the equal of the sovereigns of the oldest houses of Europe. 
He was careful, moreover, to take the crown from the hand 
of Pius VII and to place it upon his head himself. But did 


336 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


he not dare do anything he wished? He reconstituted a no- 
bility, he surrounded himself by a court; there was nothing 
that France did not approve. 

The Empire, born amid this general satisfaction and such 
benediction and which realized the marriage of the revolu- 
tionary and monarchic principles, seemed to the French to be 
the port in which they might be sure of repose after such 
wracking and terrible convulsions. By the strangest of phe- 
nomena, no one was alarmed over the one thing that rendered 
all this brilliancy fragile. The Empire could never be firmly 
established and the conquests of the Revolution assured until 
the day when the power of Britain should be laid low; and 
France almost forgot that she was at war with England. 

Napoleon did not forget it. At the time that he was dis- 
tributing offices and titles, his thought was ever on his camp 
at Boulogne. He was convinced that to conquer the English 
it was only necessary to deal them an overwhelming blow in 
their own territory and that to strike this blow he must be free, 
if for no more than a day, to cross the Channel. He saw 
clearly that England was working to form a third coalition. He 
was sure that he could defeat it and at this moment he did not 
deceive himself by the idea that this new victory on the con- 
tinent would solve the problem, any more than the others had 
done, so long as England’s great maritime power remained in- 
tact. The French navy had been ruined by the Revolution. 
Hardly had it begun to revive than it was again badly shattered 
at Aboukir. Napoleon, aided by Decrés had undertaken to 
restore it. But a navy is not the work of a moment. Although 
the coalition, because of the lively fear inspired by France, 
was slow in forming and thus allowed him some respite, still 
he had to act against it before his squadrons were ready; and 
he was compelled to turn his attention toward Germany with- 
out even having shaken the power of England. The failure 
of the Boulogne plan was to change the entire fate of the 
Empire. 

This plan was simple and daring. France had two fleets; 
it did not matter greatly if one were destroyed if only the other, 


S097 
HORS 
SA CA 





Fan 
Rae 





ae, 


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Napoleon 
the 


First 


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THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 337 


free to move, could enter the Channel and protect for only 
twenty-four hours the transport of the army from Boulogne. 
This immense stake rested on a throw of the dice and it was 
lost. Just as at Waterloo Napoleon was to wait in vain for 
Grouchy, so at Boulogne he waited in vain for Villeneuve. 
But this admiral distrusted the instrument that he had in his 
hands, the imperfect material, the officers, and the inexperienced 
crews. The fleet of Spain, the French ally, had been severely 
battered and was lacking in military spirit. Villeneuve feared 
a disaster and, as often happens, his very apprehensions were 
driving him on toward catastrophe. Decrès, the minister of 
the navy, shared his fears. “It is unfortunate for me that I 
understand the sailor’s profession,’ he dared to tell the em- 
peror, “since the knowledge can produce no result in the plans 
of Your Majesty.” The days of August, 1805, were ones of 
cruel waiting for Napoleon. Would Villeneuve report at Brest 
to enter the Channel? He learned finally that Villeneuve had 
sailed towards the south. All the plans of the emperor were 
destroyed. Once more it was necessary to abandon the invasion 
of England, or at least to defer it. Austria, who had yielded 
to the solicitations of the British government, became openly 
hostile. Russia followed her example. Prussia, in spite of 
the traditional illusion that she was the neutral ally of France, 
was not to be relied on. The only thing to do was to defeat 
the Austrians before they could effect a junction with the Rus- 
sians. Then, having imposed peace upon the continent, Na- 
poleon would turn his attention to the sea to obtain a maritime 
peace. ‘Therefore he did not entertain at this time the fatal 
idea that England would confess herself beaten as soon as the 
forces on the continent had been overcome. However, con- 
strained and forced to it by the catastrophe, the fear of which 
had paralyzed his admirals, Napoleon was finally to return to 
that idea—the idea which had already proved so costly to 
France under Louis XV. The emperor’s magnificent victories 
would later be annihilated by a naval disaster. 

The day after the capitulation of the Austrians at Ulm, 
Villeneuve attempted to evade the English fleet which was 


338 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


blocking him at Cadiz. Although inferior in numbers, the 
English destroyed the French-Spanish fleet after a terrible com- 
bat in sight of Cape Trafalgar, October 20, 1805. That day, 
although it was not immediately apparent, the game was lost 
for Napoleon. Nelson had neutralized the effect of the sur- 
render of Ulm; and all the other victories of the Empire would 
henceforth be useless. After this catastrophe the project of a 
descent upon England was no longer realizable. Napoleon 
effaced it from his mind. The defeat at Trafalgar had the 
same effect as that of La Hogue; France lost interest in the 
sea and abandoned it to the English. Everything was prom- 
ising, however, for a continental victory, and Napoleon set out 
to achieve it, calculating that after his triumph he would find 
England conciliatory. As he had anticipated, he defeated the 
Austrians before they joined the Russians. The latter had 
then offered battle and he won over them and a second Aus- 
trian army his most brilliant victory, that of Austerlitz, De- 
cember second. In a few weeks the Third Coalition had been 
crushed. Napoleon at the head of the Grand Army, and mas- 
ter of Vienna, could impose his will upon Europe. Directed 
solely by the hand of this captain of genius who was at the 
same time a dictator, the forces of France seemed invincible. 

It was only necessary to decide what use should be made 
of this military triumph. Talleyrand advised a reconciliation 
with Austria. This was a return to the policy of Louis XIV, 
Choiseul, and Vergennes; Austria would serve as a balance. 
Extending towards the Orient the length of the Danube, she 
would be a means of conservation and equilibrium; she would 
keep Russia within bounds and act as a buffer against her. 
But Napoleon had other ideas. He understood perhaps better 
than the others how fragile were his victories, as fragile as the 
territorial conquests of the Revolution which it was his mission 
to defend. As long as he did not have England at his mercy, 
nothing was lasting; and he had turned his back on the sea. 
Another plan had taken possession of his imagination. He 
was coming back to the policy whence had sprung the Egyptian 
campaign—to strike at England and make her capitulate 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 339 


through the Orient, perhaps by the taking of Constantinople. 
The peace of Pressburg, signed by a crushed Austria, marked 
a considerable extension of the Napoleonic Empire towards the 
east. Napoleon had already exchanged the presidency of the 
Italian Republic for the crown of Lombardy. In place of the 
Bourbons, at Naples, he installed his brother, Joseph. He 
took back from Austria, Venice and the former possessions of 
the Venetian Republic as far as Albania. Austria, humbled, 
very much reduced, and expelled from Germany, was no more 
than a road of communication with Constantinople. It was 
there that Napoleon wished to strike at England. 

Here the impossible task began. To execute so vast a project, 
it was necessary to dominate all Europe. Starting with the 
conquest of Belgium, the Revolution had led on to more and 
more extravagant undertakings. Neither the military genius 
of Napoleon nor his political combinations were to prove them- 
selves sufficient. The very logic of his plans pushed him to 
dangerous revisions of the map, and to greater and greater 
additions to the Prussian state. He hoped to retain the latter 
as an ally and promised her Hanover which had been taken 
from the King of England. Disposing of Germany at his 
pleasure, he destroyed the last vestiges of the empire and its 
elective constitution which had formerly been guaranteed by 
France. He carved out kingdoms which he distributed to his 
relatives as he had put his brother, Joseph, in Naples and 
Louis in Holland. Bavaria, Wiirttenberg, Baden, and Hesse- 
Darmstadt he formed into a Confederation of the Rhine under 
his presidency. That is, it became a barrier against Russia, 
a barrier protected in turn by Prussia, an advance bastion, 
charged moreover with closing the Baltic to the English. Dur- 
ing the first month of 1806, Napoleon, master of Germany, 
seemed so powerful that his enemies hesitated. The Emperor 
Alexander wondered, for the first time, if it would not be better 
to come to terms with this Emperor of the French, and to share 
the Turkish Empire with him. England, seized with an attack 
of weakness, was thinking of peace. The irreconcilable Pitt 
was dying, but the pacific Fox died in his turn and out of all 


340 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


these futile schemes, there resulted only a vast diplomatic 
muddle in which Napoleon himself became embarrassed and 
through which he created new enemies. 

Alexander I, at the last moment, changed his mind. He 
had refused to sign the treaty negotiated by Oubril. The bur- 
den of this treaty was to have been borne by Spain, the 
Balearic islands indemnifying the Bourbons of Naples. This 
deal was immediately revealed by the Russians and English, 
at the court of Madrid, and the Spanish, already demoralized 
by Trafalgar, finding themselves duped, withdrew their alli- 
ance. The conquest of Spain, therefore, would soon be a 
necessary part of the Napoleonic plan. In order to tempt 
England, Napoleon had offered to restore Hanover to King 
George. The English, with the same perfidy as before, dis- 
closed this to Prussia who previously had -entered into an un- 
derstanding with the Czar. 

On top of all this, the French party at Berlin was swept 
away by a new sort of movement, the national movement of 
the young intellectuals which was the forerunner of the up- 
rising of 1813, whose origins were to be found in the ideas of 
the French Revolution. Thus at the moment when Napoleon 
believed that in controlling central Europe he was preparing 
for peace, a new adversary presented itself, Prussia, whom 
France had so long persisted in considering as her natural 
ally. 

Napoleon’s reply was crushing. Before Russia could come 
to its aid, the Prussian army which was still living on the 
reputation of Frederick, was crushed at Jena, October, 1806, 
just as the Austrians had been at Ulm. In a few weeks Na- 
poleon had become master of most of Prussia which had sud- 
denly collapsed, while her king and queen took refuge at 
Konigsberg. He had already entered Vienna and he was now 
to enter Berlin. Since Prussia refused to aid his policy, he 
resolved to do with the north of Germany what he had done 
with the Confederation of the Rhine—make it an annex of his 
empire; he himself would close the ports of the Baltic, and 
with them all Europe, to English commerce. It was from Ber- 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 341 


lin that the continental blockade was dated. This blockade 
which was intended to overwhelm England, only led France to 
more extravagant efforts without settling anything. After Ulm, 
Austerlitz had been necessary and after Austerlitz, Jena. After 
Jena it was necessary to penetrate farther to the east, to cross 
the Vistula and go in search of the Russians, who this time 
were not offering battle. At Eylau, three hundred leagues from 
France, a battle in the midst of a snowstorm resulted in a 
bloody and contested victory (February 8, 1807) and still did 
not bring peace. Napoleon, who was beginning to be anxious, 
then proposed a bargain, an alliance with Prussia and Austria. 
They held off and refused to play the rôle of buffer against 
Russia, and were furthermore like many Europeans and even 
many French, beginning to doubt whether his enterprise would 
have an issue. Not being able to use Prussia and Austria 
for the purpose of isolating Russia, it was then necessary for 
Napoleon to conquer the Czar. A new military effort, the 
levy of the conscripts of 1808, was demanded of France, “for 
the sake of peace.” At Friedland in June, 1807, the Grand 
Army was again victorious. Konigsberg and the rest of Prussia 
fell into the emperor’s hands. 

Napoleon then felt that he had attained his end, that he 
dominated Europe, and that dominating Europe, he could hold 
England at his merey. The Czar, changeable, impressionable, 
even sly, “a shifty Greek,” returned to the idea that he had 
abandoned the year before. Why should the Emperor of Rus- 
sia not come to an understanding with the Emperor of the 
French in a policy of partition quite on the eighteenth century 
model, only this time it would be a more glorious partition than 
that of Poland, since it was a question of the Ottoman Empire. 
Napoleon then conceived the hope that, allied with the Rus- 
sians against England, closing all the Mediterranean to her, 
and threatening her even as far as India, he could force her 
to submit. In 1807 the interview at Tilsit, the pact of friend- 
ship concluded between the Emperor of the West and the Em- 
peror of the East, seemed the reward for the costly victories 
which had led the French soldiers to the banks of the Niemen. 


342 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


The first disillusionment was that this French-Russian alli- 
ance instead of discouraging England only made her the more 
determined to sustain, with all her energy, a struggle whose 
outcome would mean either life or death. The British govern- 
ment declared war against Russia and in order to shut her up 
in the Baltic and get possession of it herself, as well as to 
terrorize the neutral states, she proceeded to attack Denmark 
even more brutally than in 1801. The bombardment of Copen- 
hagen caused great indignation in Europe, but it was one of 
those passing indignations which success effaces. In this strug- 
gle between France and England, it 1s difficult to say who was 
wrong. The continental blockade was a reply to the tyranny 
which the English were exercising over navigation, but the 
continental blockade itself, as well as his project in the Orient, 
was leading Napoleon to more and more extensive occupations 
and annexations. This fatal necessity had left France no peace 
since the day when the Revolution had first desired the war. 

Everywhere the continental blockade became the source of 
difficulties which were one day to overwhelm Napoleon. There 
was one country which was not eager to shut out English mer- 
chandise. This was Portugal. Napoleon found himself 
obliged to send Junot there with an army. At the same time 
he was displeased with Spain—felt that she was not to be 
relied upon—and furthermore he had no confidence in the 
Bourbons in Madrid whom he despised. Little by little, the 
idea occurred to him to drive them out as he had already 
driven the Bourbons out of Naples. In order that the Spanish 
alliance, still more necessary to him after Junot’s expedition, 
might be more secure and give him what he expected, he needed 
at Madrid a government wholly loyal and active. Such a gov- 
ernment could only be an emanation of his own. A domestic 
drama at the Spanish capital decided him. After hesitating 
between several possibilities, Napoleon finally chose that of 
making one of his brothers King of Spain. This seemed logical 
since, as he was reigning instead of Louis XIV, he would be 
putting at Madrid a Bonaparte instead of a Bourbon. More- 
over, he despised the Spaniards as much as he did their dynasty, 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 348 


and considered them a degenerate people. In case they did not 
accept Joseph as they had accepted the Duke d’Anjou, a hun- 
dred thousand young French soldiers would be sufficient to 
hold the Iberian peninsula which was indispensable to him. At 
this same moment also, after having favored the papacy to such 
an extent, the emperor quarreled with the Pope. General 
Miollis occupied Rome in order to close the papal states, like 
the rest of Europe, to English commerce and to force Pius VII 
to become a belligerent. Thus the continental blockade was 
forcing the emperor to increasing violence and excessive efforts 
because soon, in order to hold all of Germany and all of Italy, 
with the two shores of the Adriatic, as well as Spain and Portu- 
gal, he would need a million men continually under arms; and 
in proportion as his forces became scattered, his violence, like 
his conquests, would be less patiently endured. 

In Spain it was a simple matter to dethrone the Bourbons. 
Having been brought to Bayonne, Charles IV was tricked into 
abdicating and his son, Ferdinand, renounced the throne which 
was then given to Joseph Bonaparte, who in turn ceded Naples 
to Murat. Napoleon distributed kingdoms like duchies and 
prefectures. The troops who had been brought together under 
the pretext of furnishing reénforcements for the expedition of 
Junot were to preserve order during the changing of dynasties. 
To this operation the essential thing was lacking—the consent 
of the Spanish people. A general insurrection broke out to 
which England hastened to give her support. In July, 1808, 
a serious error committed by General Dupont led to the amazing 
capitulation at Baylen. Following this reverse, the first mili- 
tary check of the Empire, Joseph, who was barely installed at 
Madrid, took the still more serious step of evacuating his capital 
and falling back with his troops towards the Pyrenees. In the 
meantime, the French communications with Portugal had been 
cut. The Portuguese population who had at first been sub- 
missive had risen in its turn. An English army having been 
landed, Junot, after some heroic battles, obtained by an hon- 
orable capitulation, the concession that the French soldiers 
should be returned to France in English ships. 


344 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


By dethroning the Bourbons in order to be surer of Spain, 
in order to administer her government directly and, as he said, 
in order to regenerate her, Napoleon had only succeeded in 
attracting the English there who were received as allies and 
liberators. He thereby condemned himself to a difficult and 
constantly recurring conflict against an insurgent people. Fur- 
thermore, the uprising of the Spanish nation became contagious. 
In Prussia, in the Tyrol and in Dalmatia, patriotism was ex- 
alted, the idea of a holy war for the sake of independence was 
born and grew apace. As the emperor recognized in his 
Mémorial, Spain was thus his first stumbling block. At the 
same time his policies were becoming more complicated. The 
alliance with Russia was languishing. The partition of Tur- 
key had been abandoned. Napoleon could not leave to the 
Russians what he himself so ardently desired, that is, Constan- 
tinople; nor could they accord it to him. In 1808, at the 
interview of Erfurt, following that of Tilsit, the two emperors, 
before a “parterre of kings,” were most profuse in their profes- 
sions of friendship. Napoleon permitted Alexander to take pos- 
session of Wallachia and Moldavia (the present Roumania), 
then Turkish provinces. At the request of the Czar he also 
agreed to evacuate a great part of Prussia, an evacuation, how- 
ever, which the Spanish insurrection and the levies of troops 
which it demanded, rendered necessary. The French were 
gradually coming to the end of their forces. In the meantime 


Austria was taking courage; England, always generous of sub- 


sidies, was forcing her into the conflict and the Czar refused 
when Napoleon asked him to join the French in order to in- 
timidate Austria. The interview at Erfurt gave the impres- 
sion that the French-Russian alliance was not solid and Na- 
poleon, feeling that the affairs in Spain were ruining his 
prestige, decided to cross the Pyrenees himself in order to in- 
stall his brother, Joseph, at Madrid. 


It would take many volumes to tell the story of these cam- 
paigns, which were engendered one by the other, and none of . 
which decided anything. Hardly had Napoleon restored the | 
military situation in Spain and brought back Joseph, than he : 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 345 


had to leave his lieutenants there at grips with the rebels. 
Austria, encouraged by the difficulties of France, had again 
entered the war, and the emperor had to betake himself from 
the borders of the Ebro to the banks of the Danube. Austria’s 
preparations had been serious. She was not a negligible ad- 
versary. The battle of Essling was won with difficulty and the 
victory of Wagram was costly (July, 1809). But another 
complication arose from this victory. In order to deal Austria 
a surer blow, Napoleon had sent against her Poniatowski and 
some of his Poles. Now, as in the eighteenth century, the 
question of Poland entered into French politics and alliances, 
and since the partitions, any Polish situation always involved 
Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Alexander, who had remained 
neutral during the Austro-French war, was keeping his eye 
on Gallicia, and already disappointed by the abandonment of 
the plans concerning Turkey, was becoming anxious over a 
possible reconstruction of Poland. Napoleon then saw that 
if Russia was no longer a faithful ally, if she refused to join 
the continental blockade, she would become an enemy and it 
would be necessary to defeat her in turn. The idea of con- 
quering England through Europe and Asia, of conquering the 
sea by means of the land, led to these consequences which at 
first view seem absurd, but which are however, logically bound 
together. 

It was not with a light heart that Napoleon decided to cross 
the Niemen and carry the war into Russia. He was continually 
hoping not to be obliged to come to it, if Spain were submissive 
and if the United States, to whom he was promising Florida 
after having ceded Louisana, should declare war on England. 
His hope was that the latter, her interests and her very ex- 
istence even, menaced by the continental blockade, would end 
by asking for peace. Doubtless this blockade did strike a 
terrible blow at British commerce. It was not less serious for 
the commerce of other nations. Holland did not submit to it, 
and Napoleon had to take that country away from his brother 
Louis who had espoused the cause of his new subjects. Napoleon 
annexed it to France and divided it into departments. This 


346 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


gave England one more reason for not disarming. Thus the 
continental blockade led either to new wars or to such an ex- 
pansion of the Empire that, the English having refused to 
recognize the conquests of the Revolution, were also resolutely 
to refuse to recognize the new conquests, necessitated by the 
first and intended to guarantee them. 

The French were beginning to be anxious. Common sense 
told them that this extension of territory and of the war could 
not go on indefinitely, and yet no one could see the end. Even 
in the emperor’s own circle, certain perspicacious men, like 
Talleyrand and Fouché, began to feel that all this would end 
badly. And yet the Empire never seemed so great, or the 
future so sure as in 1810 when Napoleon, having divorced and 
sent away Josephine who had borne him no children, married 
an archduchess of the house of Austria. In this he was repeat- 
ing the marriage of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, into 
whose family he was thus entering. The following year Marie 
Louise bore him a son; the hereditary Empire had an heir, 
and this son was called the King of Rome just as the heir of 
the Holy Roman Empire had been called King of the Romans. 
But Rome in 1811 was no longer anything but the capital of 
the department of the Tiber. The Pope had been deported to 
Savona and was later to become a prisoner at Fontainebleau. 
Through the continental blockade, the restorer of catholicism in 
France had alienated from himself the Catholics of the entire 
world. And yet, excommunicated, having dethroned the Bour- 
bons at Naples and at Madrid, he had married a daughter of 
the Hapsburgs. His extraordinary fortune carried everything 
before it. 

Napoleon had not decided upon this Austrian marriage, 
which was almost in defiance of the Revolution, until after he 
had been unsuccessful in contracting a marriage with the sister 
of the Czar. Alexander was withdrawing from the alliance and 
Napoleon was already losing faith in it. He believed war was 
inevitable. Putting himself in the Czar’s place, he could not 
see how the Russian Empire would ever accept such extension 
of the French Empire. Through the necessity of maintaining a 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 347 


blockade, Napoleon had ended by annexing the Hanseatic towns 
of Bremen and Hamburg, which became the centers of two of 
his 130 departments. France now reached as far as the Baltic 
and the nearer she approached Russia the more a great conflict 
was to be expected, for difficulties were arising constantly over 
Oldenburg, Poland, and the East, and Russia was, moreover, 
reluctant to shut out English commerce. Although they were 
still allies, the two emperors were arming against each other. 
This arming in itself constituted a grievance and Napoleon, 
henceforth convinced that this new war was bound to come and 
that he would attain his ends only after having conquered Rus- 
sia, as he had already conquered Prussia and Austria, prepared 
for the year 1812 the greatest army the world had ever seen. 
This army, composed of men from all the allied or subjugated 
countries, was called the army of “twenty nations” and its 
march was a sort of crusade of the West against Asiatic Russia. 

Napoleon, as much by reason of his natural bent as for the 
sake of policy, gave to this crusade the watchword of the Revo- 
lution, the liberation of the peoples; and the pledge of his 
sincerity was to be the reconstruction of Poland. He disre- 
garded the fact that the Spanish were fighting against him to 
gain their independence and that the spirit of nationality in- 
spired by the principles of the Revolution was agitating the 
masses of Germany. Alexander, skillful at playing all rôles, 
was, on his side, talking in terms of liberalism, was invoking 
the cause of justice, and bespeaking the interest of all the coun- 
tries conquered or subjugated by France or insurgent against 
her. He was also preparing for a reconciliation with Prussia 
and Austria, the accomplices of Russia in the partition of Po- 
land. Napoleon, therefore, was staking everything on this 
Russian campaign from which he could not escape. Victorious, 
he would be master of the East, of Constantinople, of all 
Europe and he would then oblige England to capitulate. Con- 
quered, we shall find him himself giving the signal of disaster 
when he deserted the army in Russia. Thus the war, begun in 
1792, after having carried the French on its flood tide to Mos- 
cow, was to return in its swift and cruel ebb to the gates of 


348 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Paris. Because France had thought to conquer Belgium and 
the left bank of the Rhine in one fell swoop, she had been 
obliged to enter on the Russian campaign and both under- 
takings were equally senseless. 

In June, 1812, the Grand Army crossed the Niemen but the 
Russians still avoided giving battle. Alexander had said that, 
were it necessary, he would retire beyond Tobolsk. Napoleon 
fully expected that, from Moscow, he would dictate peace to 
Russia. The Russians burned the city and did not make peace. 
Then commenced a retreat which after the passage of the 
Beresina wrecked his army. In the month of December, Ney 
and Gerard arrived almost alone, at Kônigsberg. The Grand 
Army had melted away. The emperor himself had secretly 
abandoned it, knowing well the extent of the catastrophe and 
fearing the effects it would have in Europe and even in France. 
The conspiracy of General Malet, news of which had reached 
him in Russia, had shown him how precarious was his hold 
on the government and how weakened his prestige. 

From this time on, the history of the Empire is that of the 
rapid return to conditions such as they were when Napoleon 
became dictator in 1799. In order to save the Revolution and 
its conquests, the task with which the republicans had charged 
him on the 18th Brumaire, he had received permission from 
France to take the crown, to found a dynasty, to take possession 
of a half of Europe, and to levy and kill men without number. 
All this was to be in vain. In a few months France was to be 
brought back to the point from which she had started. 

If, in 1809, the success of the Spanish insurrection had en- 
couraged England to persevere and had revived the courage of 
the conquered peoples, the disaster of the Grand Army in 
1813 was, to a far greater degree, to strengthen the enemy’s 
determination to bring France to her knees. The English said 
to themselves that it was now only a question of adding a few 
more sacrifices to those they had already made, before they 
would reap their reward. The declaration of war by the United 
States, so long hoped for by Napoleon, came at this moment, 
caused far more by the maritime tyranny of England than by 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 349 


any efforts of French diplomacy. But even this could no longer 
change the resolution of the British government. Moreover, 
everything indicated a general turn of events in favor of the 
cause of which England, at one time, had remained almost the 
only champion. The nationalistic propaganda was bearing 
fruit in Germany. Prussia, while protesting her loyalty to 
France, had evaded her obligations and was secretly reorganiz- 
ing her army. A Prussian corps, fighting in the French ranks 
and commanded by General York, went over to the Russians. 
This defection caused an immense sensation in Germany, and 
hastened the retreat of the last remains of the French army, 
which did not stop till it reached the Elbe. The Prussian gov- 
ernment dropped its mask and yielded to public opinion which 
desired a war of liberation and independence. 

Napoleon wished to consider his Russian defeat as a mere 
accident. He thought that in Germany it would still be easy 
for him to defeat the Prussians and Russians. Javing levied 
and organized a new army, he did, in fact, defeat them at 
Liitzen and at Bautzen. The campaign of 1813 began well. 
However, he distrusted Austria, not without reason, and instead 
of following up his first successes, he accepted an armistice in 
order to be ready to fight a third adversary. He did not fear this 
coalition of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and he preferred 
to finish with it at one blow thinking that he had sufficient 
guaranties in his hands to obtain, even from England, a gen- 
eral and advantageous peace. The victory at Dresden, August 
twenty-seventh, still seemed to justify his expectations. But 
several of his lieutenants, poorly supported by their contingents 
from the German Confederation, were one by one defeated and 
thus destroyed his plans. Coming back upon Leipzig in order 
to prevent the members of the coalition from uniting there, 
Napoleon waged a three-day battle in the course of which the 
Saxon auxiliaries deserted to the enemy. This great battle 
lost, and all Germany with it, it was necessary to fall back on 
the Rhine. In November, what was left of the Grand Army 
entered Mayence after having had to fight its way to Hanau 
through the Bavarians who had likewise deserted. 


350 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Once back on the Rhine was it possible to sign a peace that 
should at least preserve the natural frontiers? It was the old 
question of the Revolution. While Prussia had finally revealed 
that of all the German powers she was the most bitter enemy 
of the French, the English did not wish to allow France to 
retain Antwerp. This had always been the stake of this war 
which had lasted for over twenty years. And now Holland 
had just risen against the French domination. Belgium was 
tired of conscription and taxes and within her boundaries also 
an old and unconquerable national spirit was awakening. Kept 
informed of the state of things in France, the English govern- 
ment knew that she was exhausted. She knew that everything 
had been organized for conquest and nothing for defense; that 
the numerical superiority of the coalition was considerable; 
and that, furthermore, the Napoleonic Empire was tottering 
within. England’s determination to put an end to the Empire 
was of even greater weight than the hatred of Prussia and that 
is why the parleys, which took place before the allies entered 
Paris, were not sincere. Since 1793 it had been written that, 
if England were not vanquished, France would have no peace 
unless she returned to her former limits. As for Napoleon 
himself, no one understood better than he that, like the Con- 
vention and the Directory, he was the slave of his own war and 
his own conquests. He had to defend these conquests or fall 
with them as the Revolution had fallen. The very nature of 
his power, the conditions under which he had received it, for- 
bade him that honorable and political peace for not concluding 
which people have so foolishly reproached him. In the first 
place the Alles did not wish it, although they took pains to 
make the French believe that only the insane ambition of 
their emperor prevented them from having it. In the second 
place, no government of revolutionary origin could accept the 
old limits. “Considering the point to which affairs have now 
come,” said Napoleon, “only a Bourbon can succeed me.” 

Nevertheless, the Bourbons did succeed him for another rea- 
son. In 1814 the Allies had invaded France and they did not 
agree among themselves as to what form of government they 


THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE 301 


preferred for her. It was not for reéstablishing her monarchy 
that they had made war now or at any other time. The Em- 
peror of Austria preferred the regency of his daughter, Marie 
Louise, which would have given him control of French affairs. 
The Russian emperor was dreaming of a king of his own mak- 
ing, Bernadotte, for instance, one of the most fortunate adven- 
turers of the Revolution. Through a combination of extraordi- 
nary circumstances, the latter had become a prince royal of 
Sweden, and had betrayed the cause of Napoleon. Prussia, 
always with an eye to her own aggrandizement, was indifferent 
to what régime France had, provided she had a share in the 
spoils. There remained Castlereagh who wished to see France 
reduced but independent, subject to neither Austria nor Rus- 
sia. He was of the belief that only a Bourbon could fulfill the 
conditions that England desired, because, as Albert Sorel says, 
this “government by principles and not by expedients would 
not be under obligation to any of the allies.” France either 
did not know or misunderstood all these calculations by which 
her monarchy was to be restored. The French thought it had 
been brought about and imposed by the enemy. As a matter 
of fact, according to the system of European balance which 
England followed, the restoration was destined to preserve 
France’s independence against foreign powers. The campaign 
in France, the most admired of all Napoleon’s campaigns, was 
a useless masterpiece. His victories at Brienne, Champaubert, 
Montmirail, and Montereau, Albert Sorel compares with those 
of Valmy. The Allies occasionally hesitated and wondered if 
the moment had not come to make peace. But just as the 
Revolution had insisted that the enemy should first leave French 
territory, Napoleon wished to guarantee the natural frontiers 
of France—he could not do otherwise—and the Allies were only 
fighting to take them away from her. “We have got to put on 
our boots and go after them with the courage of ’93,” said 
Napoleon in February, 1814. Instinctively he turned back to 
the Revolution and recalled Carnot, the former collaborator of 
Robespierre who had remained apart from the Empire, but 
who now gave him his support. The Allies, on their side, had 


352 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


not forgotten that after Valmy, the invader having withdrawn 
to the other side of the Rhine, the Revolution had decided to 
pursue him there. This vision strengthened their determination 
and tightened their alliance. After having concluded among 
themselves the agreement of Chaumont, the four powers re- 
sumed the offensive, resolved to dictate peace. 

In the meantime, everything was crumbling about Napoleon. 
With his improvised soldiers, almost children, and the last that 
France could furnish him, he tried again to stop the enemy and 
then outflank him in order to defeat him. Through the lack 
of troops his last plans failed. On March 30, the Allies were 
masters of Paris and from Montmartre one of the Germans 
wrote: “It is nine centuries and a half since our Emperor 
Otto planted his eagles on these hills.” 

On April 11, 1814, Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau. 
Not only his senate, which owed its existence to the Conven- 
tion, abandoned him and called for the return of the Bour- 
bons, but even his marshals urged him, in many violent scenes, 
to give up the government and leave. France had returned to 
the state of affairs which existed before the 18th Brumaire and 
from which the Directory had wished to escape. It is again 
Albert Sorel who remarks that the Empire ended by one of 
those riotous “days” which had overthrown so many revolution- 
ary governments. On May 5, Louis XVIII entered Paris while 
the fallen emperor was landing on the island of Elba. 

The emperor’s story which is to have a lamentable epilogue 
at Waterloo is not yet finished. One thing, however, is ended 
and the return from Elba will in nowise change it. The Revo- 
lution, in spite of the imperial metamorphosis in which it had 
taken refuge, had not succeeded in giving France the extension 
which she had dreamed. It ended in a defeat. In the midst of 
the confusion it had multiplied in France, it was now a question 
of restoring to the conquered country her rank and her security. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
THE RESTORATION 


Aut these events, the most concise recital of which requires 
so much space, took place within twenty-five years. A French- 
man, a youth in 1789, was in full maturity in 1814. A quar- 
ter of a century is not very long, yet much had happened. In 
that part of its program which concerned the republican régime 
and the natural frontiers, the Revolution had twice miscarried ; 
first, when in order to preserve itself, it had to resort to the 
dictatorship, to absolute power, to the Empire; and second, 
when instead of keeping the Rhine and the Scheldt as its fron- 
tiers, the Empire had finally opened the old territory to in- 
vasion. What could France do then, what solution was there 
for her plight? The only possible one, and there were few 
who did not rally to it, was the recall of the Bourbons. Al- 
though he had little love for them, Talleyrand had been one 
of the chief workers for their restoration; because after taking 
stock of the situation, he saw that every other plan was im- 
practicable. Any régime, republican or imperial, which had its 
origin in the Revolution would have to continue the war and 
France had come to the end of her resources. There is nothing 
more significant than the eagerness with which Napoleon’s 
marshals rallied about Louis XVIII. Since 1812, they had 
foreseen that the greater part of “all this” would end badly. It 
had ended badly and any régime whatsoever would have great 
difficulty in governing. But the Republic had abdicated on the 
18th Brumaire; the Empire had gone to pieces after its defeat 
and neither the Republic nor the Empire could conclude peace. 
The monarchy had to assume this responsibility. 

It had been repeatedly said that the Bourbons, during their 


exile, had forgotten nothing and learned nothing. It would 
353 


354 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


be more just to wonder that they should have forgotten so much 
of the old and found it easy to accept so much of the new. The 
brothers of Louis XVI thought of reéstablishing neither the 
former Constitution nor the former physiognomy of the king- 
dom. They accepted the situation as it was, with its adminis- 
tration of the Year VIII, and the Codes; even leaving at their 
post a great part of Napoleon’s prefects and subprefects. Never, 
in the history of the dynasty, had there been so long an inter- 
regnum and we may well be surprised that royalty should have 
returned from exile with so small a bundle of prejudices. The 
émigrés had brought back many more. One of the most an- 
noying things for the monarchy, and one which was new to it, 
was the existence of a royalist party. Formerly it was only 
those who were not royalists who formed themselves into parties. 
The most delicate task for the restored Bourbons was to dis- 
engage themselves from their partisans, men who had suffered 
and fought for them and whose devotion, if only for the sake 
of the safety of the royal family, was still useful. Although 
the royalists had a claim to just treatment, as did other French- 
men, the king could not govern for them alone. Nevertheless, 
they expected reparations and rewards. On the other hand, it 
was necessary to reassure the large category of those who held 
property which had been purchased from the state. Besides 
this, from all parts of the great Napoleonic Empire, from the 
interior of Germany and Italy, where isolated corps of the 
Grand Army had held out in spite of the fall of the Empire, 
soldiers, officers, and government officials were returning by 
thousands. All this body of men whose sole occupation had 
been war, and for whom there was no longer any employment, 
were forming a class of malcontents. Among them Bonapartism 
was to find its recruits. There were also what remained of the 
Jacobins who had been silent during the Empire but whom its 
fall had brought to life. It was to be difficult to find a middle 
course in the midst of so many diverse elements and interests. 

Louis XVIII was aware of the dangers which surrounded a 
monarchy restored after such a long interruption. For the 
moment, things were simple enough. The Bourbons had not 


THE RESTORATION 355 


had to offer themselves; they had been asked to return. France 
was weary of the war, weary also of what was called imperial 
despotism. Louis XVIII, who was a man of experience, edu- 
cation, and tact, and who had seen much, understood the con- 
ditions to which he was returning. He had to use his authority 
carefully and it would not have been prudent for him to begin 
his reign by humiliating the principle from which he derived 
his power. It was necessary for him to respect the ideas of 
the time. The Senate, in calling him to the throne, had made 
certain conditions, had fixed certain guaranties concerning per- 
sons and properties, and had drawn up a program of consti- 
tutional government. Save for one point, Louis accepted every- 
thing. The system of having two Chambers or Houses as in 
England, seemed to be the best and even most convenient for 
amonarchy. There was no longer any reason why civil equality 
should be displeasing to a king of France. The brother of 
Louis XVI knew how fatal the resistance of the privileged 
classes, which blocked all reforms, had been for the old régime. 
The guaranty of property rights, of incomes and pensions, went 
without saying. To reign over France it was necessary to take 
her as she was. There was only one thing which Louis XVIII 
did not accept; it was the conditional character of this consti- 
tution. Instead of an imposed charter which would have di- 
minished his power, which would have subjected his govern- 
ment to all sorts of exigencies and continual capitulations, as 
happened to Louis XVI, he insisted upon a charter, granted 
by himself. Without this it would not have been worth while 
to restore the monarchy. Thus the transition was assured from 
an “absolute” to a “constitutional” monarchy. Louis XVIII 
gained by this the respect both of the new constituents and 
of the enemy sovereigns. “One would have said,’ remarked 
Alexander, “that it was he who had just replaced me upon my 
throne.” 

The monarchy, with the Charter, was then the most favorable 
and most natural form that could have been found. It recon- 
ciled the past with the present, order with liberty. But, above 
all, without the Bourbons, France would have been condemned, 


356 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


as Talleyrand said, to servitude or partition. A victorious 
enemy was on French soil; it remained to conclude peace. This 
was not easy. The disaster was not the fault of the monarchy. 
The thing which had dealt the final blow to Louis XVI was 
his opposition to the war of 1792, the war which had just ended 
with the entry of the Allies into Paris. The task of the mon- 
archy was to liquidate this long adventure. The French per- 
ceived then that the Allies had been fighting neither the Revo- 
lution nor Napoleon, but France. The peace which they had 
made was hardly less severe than they would have imposed 
upon the Republic twenty years earlier had they been victorious. 
It was a matter of indifference to them that their demands 
reacted upon the popularity of the Bourbons who were made 
responsible for a situation which they had not created. 

Louis XVIII had not yet returned to France when the true 
intention of the Allies became apparent. What France most 
ardently desired was to be delivered from the foreign occupa- 
tion. By the agreement of April twenty-ninth, the Count 
d'Artois had received the promise of an immediate evacuation 
in exchange for the surrender of the isolated French troops 
who were still defending themselves in Italy, Germany and 
Holland. France held to her agreement but the Allies did not 
hold to theirs. They had vaguely agreed that they would 
recognize certain extensions of the French frontiers beyond 
what they had been in 1792. The treaty of Paris, of May 30, 
1814, accorded her only a slight rectification of her frontiers, 
with Philippeville and Marienburg. Landau, which under 
Louis XVI had formed a French enclave, was restored to 
France and she now received the Queich, a tributary of the 
Rhine, as boundary. This boundary was one of the things de- 
manded by Marshal Foch but decisively refused by France’s 
allies in 1914. Louis XVIIT held above everything to the doc- 
trine of national security, a doctrine as immutable as geography 
itself, and wished to set a greater distance between Paris and the 
gates of invasion by keeping, from Dixmude to Luxemburg, 
the lines and the strongholds which protected her. Thereupon 
he ran counter to an inflexible will. It was indeed for the pur- 


THE RESTORATION 357 


pose of driving France out of Belgium that England had so 
prolonged the war. Her idea had not changed. As in 1718, 
it was a question of erecting a “barrier” between France and 
the mouth of the Scheldt and that barrier was again to be 
Holland. Belgium became once more the object of those diplo- 
matic and strategic calculations of which she had so long been 
the victim, and was united to Holland without even being con- 
sulted. At the same time England drew a vast network about 
certain naval bases and colonies which had nothing to do with 
this war of principles which she had pretended to be waging 
against the Revolution. When she took the Ile de France (re- 
baptized Mauritius) Tobago and Santa Lucia in the Antilles; 
when she forbade the French to enter San Domingo; when she 
kept the Cape which was taken away from Holland; and when 
she took possession of Malta and the Ionian Islands, she was 
only continuing the plan of maritime domination which she 
had pursued throughout the eighteenth century. Likewise, 
Prussia, Austria, and Russia by their partitions of Poland and 
their acquisitions in Germany and the East, betrayed the real 
significance of this war. These conquests were its veritable 
object. 

They had been made possible by the upheaval in Europe 
which the Revolution had provoked, which the Empire had 
accomplished, and through which France had lost the advan- 
tages she had possessed ever since the treaty of Westphalia. 
To what a dangerous state of instability this new Europe was 
condemned, we can judge from the Congress of Vienna in which 
all the European states, France included, were called upon to 
construct a system of equilibrium to replace that which Na- 
poleon had just destroyed. Hardly had the Congress assembled 
than talk of war was resumed. The Allies quarreled among 
themselves over the spoils of the Napoleonic Empire. Austria 
and England, with whom France took her stand, opposed Prus- 
sia and Russia who were united by their common greed. In 
the midst of these rivalries, the instructions of Louis XVIII, 
skillfully carried out by Talleyrand, immediately established 
France’s European situation. France, to whom everything had 


358 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


been refused, assumed the attitude of a disinterested country, 
defender of public rights and legitimate sovereignties, the 
opponent of conquests and cynical partitions. The Allies pre- 
tended to be fighting against her for the sake of a principle. 
France now armed herself with this principle to prevent the 
dangerous expansion of the other countries, those vast ag- 
glomerations which Napoleon had only too greatly favored. She 
used it to protect Germany from Prussia, Italy from Austria 
and finally Turkey, where she had to look out for her own 
former privileges, from Russia. This policy, in keeping with 
the best diplomatic traditions, recalled the spirit of Vergennes. 
It was the policy of national security. It placed France at the 
head of the moderate party, and restored to her the rôle of 
protector of the small and middle-sized states. It was in this 
spirit that Talleyrand defended the King of Saxony who had 
remained loyal to Napoleon and whose kingdom Prussia, on 
this pretext, wished to keep. The independence of Saxony 
guaranteed that of the other Germanic states and, as far as 
was possible after the changes made in Germany by Napoleon, 
restored the conditions of the treaty of Westphalia. In ex- 
change for Saxony, which the King of Prussia ardently desired 
because it made of his territory a homogeneous unit, he received 
the Rhine provinces which he did not want because they were 
too far removed from the center of the Prussian state. They 
were separated from it by the other German states and being 
Catholic were difficult for a Protestant country to assimilate. 
In our day, Talleyrand is still accused of having installed Prus- 
sia at the gates of France. “Nothing,” he replied, “would be 
simpler or more natural than to take back these provinces 
from Prussia, while if they had been awarded as compensation 
to the King of Saxony, it would be difficult to despoil him of 
them.” 

A year had hardly passed since the Allies had entered Paris 
and the situation of France in Europe was reéstablished beyond 
all expectations. The Bourbons had rendered the service that 
had been expected of them. The proof of it lies in the dis- 
appointment of Prussia, France’s most hated enemy. German 


THE RESTORATION 359 


nationalism, wakened from its long slumber by the principles 
of the Revolution, and then roused against the Napoleonic domi- 
nation, had dreamed of a great Germany extending to the 
Vosges mountains, united by the country of Frederick and the 
liberal and patriotic reformers who had prepared the war of 
independence. But Germany remained divided, a confedera- 
tion of states in which Austria balanced Prussia, as much like 
the former Germanic Empire as it could be after the territorial 
changes made by Napoleon. 

As for France, she did not appreciate this sort of miracle of 
political art which had allowed her to escape from the alterna- 
tive of servitude or partition. This redress was only under- 
stood and appreciated later after the severest trials. It was 
only after the treaty of Frankfort that history did justice to 
the treaty of Vienna. Unconscious of the advantages gained 
and of the purposes involved, because they were beyond the 
comprehension of the masses and could not be explained openly 
without compromising their success, France had seen only the 
curtailing of her frontiers. And she imputed to the Bourbons, 
brought back, as people were beginning to say, “in the caissons 
of the enemy,” a fault which was not theirs. Thiers repeats 
with an insistence which is remarkable considering the time in 
which he wrote and the public by whom he was read, that the 
whole fault was Napoleon’s. 

It was only necessary, however, for Napoleon to return from 
Elba with an audacity which recalls the return from Egypt, 
and for him but to appear, to rally almost all of France to his 
standard. There is perhaps no more extraordinary phenomenon 
in French history. All thinking men foresaw that a new at- 
tempt on the part of the emperor would end in a catastrophe 
worse than that of 1814. Even the liberals were sorry to see 
the Charter fall. France was tired of war and what she had 
most insistently demanded of the Bourbons was that conscrip- 
tion should be abolished. Napoleon pretended that he had 
been recalled by a general discontent with the restored mon- 
archy. ‘There was to be sure, between the old society of the 
returned émigrés and the new society, a certain friction which 


360 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


it was difficult to avoid. Above all, the returning soldiers, with 
their officers irritated at being put on half pay, who had only 
returned to France after the Convention of April twenty-third, 
and who had not seen the invasion, felt that they were the vic- 
tims of an unmerited misfortune, because it had been impossible 
to preserve the framework of the Napoleonic Grand Army. 
However, nothing in all this was very serious. A few plots 
had been uncovered and swiftly suppressed. When, however, 
Napoleon himself returned, his presence was sufficient to create 
such a change of public sentiment that in three weeks he re- 
conquered France. As soon as he appeared, everything was 
forgotten—the disasters of yesterday, as well as those of which 
his return was the forerunner, the slaughter for which the 
people had cursed his name, and the abhorred conscriptions. 
Officers and soldiers alike rallied to him. Knowing so well how 
to address his soldiers, he touched their hearts by recalling 
their military glory, and the first detachment sent to bar his 
route acclaimed him after a brief moment of hesitation. 
Grenoble and then Lyons opened their gates to him. Marshal 
Ney, who had promised to arrest and bring him back “in a 
cage if necessary,” weakened in his turn and yielded to the 
general enthusiasm. Landing with a handful of men, near 
Cannes in the Gulf of Juan on March 1, 1815, Napoleon was 
at the Tuileries on the twentieth, while Louis XVIII retired to 
Ghent. 

One hundred days—the adventure lasted no longer, but that 
was sufficient to cause incalculable havoc. First of all, within, 
it made more difficult the reconciliation of the diverse French 
elements. Napoleon was not only past master in the art of 
war, he knew that of politics, for he had learned from experi- 
ence during the Revolution. And it was above all the memory 
of the Revolution that he awakened, talking of glory to the 
soldiers, and of peace and liberty to the people. The authori- 
tarian emperor had come back as a demagogue. Two things 
might still injure his cause—the fear that the Allies might 
renew hostilities and the fear of imperial despotism. He 
quieted the one by assuring the people that his father-in-law, 





THE RESTORATION 361 


the Emperor of Austria, would not permit a renewal of the 
war; he quieted the other by telling the peasants that they 
“were threatened with the return of tithes, privileges, and feudal 
rights,” and that he had come “to wrest them from their bond- 
age to the soil and their serfdom.” This restorer of religious 
worship and founder of a new nobility was now inciting the 
masses against the nobles and the priests. To the liberals he 
promised a Chamber of Representatives and the liberty of the 
press, which Louis XVIII had already given them, but Na- 
poleon promised to give them, in addition, the spirit of the 
Revolution. “If it was a crime to recall Bonaparte,” wrote 
Madame de Staél who could not forgive him, “it was nonsense 
to disguise such a man as a constitutional monarch.” How- 
ever, the greater part of the liberals wished to be duped. Benja- 
min Constant, a few days after he had called Napoleon the 
“asurper,’ drew up the Acte additionel to the Constitution 
of the Empire. The old imperial Constitution by virtue of this 
act was to return to force during the Hundred Days. Constant 
himself, in his first interviews with the emperor, had “recog- 
nized his scorn for discussions and debates,” a disposition which 
“seemed to await only victory to become more pronounced.” 
But defeat came first. In spite of it the figure of a liberal 
Napoleon confounded with the cause of the Revolution re- 
mained. From this time dates that alliance of the Bonapartists 
and the liberals which was to disturb the Restoration and the 
monarchy of Louis Philippe and prepare for the reign of 
Napoleon III. 

Outside of France, the consequences of the return from 
Elba were no less serious. The Allies were informed of it in 
Vienna on March thirteenth. They immediately declared the 
emperor “an outlaw of the nations.” The pact of Chaumont 
was renewed. The resumption of the war was certain and new 
misfortunes likely to fall upon France. Talleyrand, who repre- 
sented her at the Congress, found himself in a most cruel 
situation. Foreseeing what was going to happen, he decided 
_ to join with the Allies in order to preserve at least the con- 
ditions of the treaty of Paris lest a future treaty might be 


362 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


worse. But it was easy to misinterpret this act of prudence 
and to maintain that the monarchy had allied itself with the 
enemies of the French nation. And when the men who had 
been involved in the Hundred Days were to look for an excuse, 
it was this perfidious argument of which they made use. 

At no moment had Napoleon believed that the Allies would 
allow him to reign or that he would be able to reign over a 
France reduced to her former limits. He was ever a slave to 
the law which pushed him unceasingly into war. Banned by 
Europe, he prepared to fight. The people followed him but 
many of the French were filled with sinister presentiments and 
the enthusiasm of the first days of his return had subsided. 
In the plebiscite which took place, as formerly, to approve the 
Acte additionnel, there was a large number of abstentions. An 
Assembly on the Champ de mai, a new form of the Féte of the 
Federation, was not a gay event. The energy of the nation 
flagged; the minds of the people were troubled; Napoleon’s 
lieutenants were anxious. Desirous of preventing a new in- 
vasion, the emperor left on the twelfth of June for Belgium 
with the design of separating Wellington and Bliicher, who had 
one hundred thousand men more than he, and of defeating one 
after the other. In spite of a success at Ligny, he was not 
able to prevent the junction of the English and the Prussians. 
What people call adversity, and which is only the effect of a 
combination of causes, attended the French. Grouchy, to whom 
the emperor had confided an army as a reward for political 
services, blundered in trying to help, and remained useless 
during the great battle waged on the eighteenth of June. The 
defeat of Waterloo resounded throughout the world and was 
only equaled by that of Trafalgar. Returning to Paris on 
the twentieth, there remained nothing for Napoleon to do but 
to abdicate a second time. He took this resolution after a 
vote of the Chamber which he had had elected and which now 
speedily abandoned him. 

All these events have a romantic coloring and an impassioned 
character. They surpass comprehension. A folly of three 


THE RESTORATION 363 


months brought back the enemy and again put in question 
what had been so painfully obtained in 1814. This time the 
Allies demanded still more, and Talleyrand, through his pre- 
cautions at Vienna, was only able to prevent those most serious 
projected mutilations of her territory—the ones which were de- 
manded by Prussia, the most implacable enemy of France. 
However the price of Waterloo through the second treaty of 
Paris, November 20, 1815, was the loss of more than five 
hundred thousand souls. France lost Philippeville, Marien- 
burg, and Bouillon; that is, the strongholds protecting her 
northern frontier, which was thus made more vulnerable to 
invasion. She lost Sarrelouis and Landau; the gap through 
which the Prussians were to enter in 1870 was opened and the 
treaty of 1919 did not restore the limits of 1814. She again 
lost Chambéry and Annecy which were taken back by the house 
of Savoy. Finally, she had to endure an occupation of five 
years and pay a war indemnity of 700 millions. These mis- 
fortunes, France had brought upon herself; she had provoked 
them, when, yielding to a sentimental impulse, remembering 
the days of glory, she had forgotten everything else and thrown 
herself into the arms of the emperor. And yet the Napoleonic 
legend grew apace. Deported to Saint Helena by the English, 
Napoleon continued to act upon the imagination of the people. 
The hero became a martyr. His cause was confounded with 
that of the Revolution and the literature of the day, from the 
highest to the lowest, propagated this mysticism. The treaties 
of 1815 had left France crushed from her fall after her brief 
and amazing dream. Through a crying injustice, but one 
natural to man, who loves to put upon others the responsibility 
for his own faults and ills, it was neither to Napoleon nor to 
themselves that the French people imputed the treaties of 1815, 
but to the Bourbons who had done their utmost to soften their 
conditions. 

After the disaster of Walterloo it was again Louis XVIII 
who returned; because it was he alone who could do so. There 
had been talk of the Duke of Orléans and even of the Prince 
of Orange. A sentiment which had not been apparent in 1814 


364 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


had developed as a result of the fact that the Bonapartists and 
the liberals had been responsible for the Hundred Days and 
sought some excuse for their error and their defeat. It was 
a sentiment of hatred towards the Bourbons of the elder branch, 
a hatred which was not to be appeased since they were a living 
reproach to those who had made such a serious mistake. In © 
the meantime, the reconciliation of the parties in France had 
been made still more difficult because Napoleon had revived 
the passion of the revolutionary period. During these three 
months, the Jacobins, united with the Bonapartists, had taken — 
revenge upon the royalists, a revenge which in its turn led to 
reprisals. In the south, especially, which was exceedingly anti- 
Napoleonic, there had been violent popular riots which, at 
Avignon, had cost the life of Marshal Brune. The government 
of Louis XVIII suppressed them by force of arms; and this 
“White Terror’ became a new source of grievance for the : 
liberal opposition. It was, on the other hand, necessary to 
hunt out and punish the men who had made themselves re : 
sponsible for the new calamities to France, by joining with 
Napoleon instead of arresting him as was their duty. The 
trial and execution of Ney was one of those “cruel necessities” 
which are imposed upon governments and the sentimental en- 
thusiasm to which the marshal had yielded had cost too dearly 
for him not to be made an example. However, Ney in turn 
became a victim and a martyr, as though his weakness on the 
day when he threw himself into the arms of the emperor had 
not been the cause of a new war, an absurd and hopeless war, 
in which Frenchmen had perished only to invite invasion and 
ageravate the demands of the enemy. 

The second restoration thus had a more painful task than 
the first, inasmuch as it had to punish and be cruel and had 
also to reckon with its own partisans. The parliamentary 
régime was new in France. Its beginnings are so unique that 
it is worth while to consider them for a moment. 

The assembly which was elected after that of the Hundred 
Days was intensely royalistic, so much so that Louis himself 
did not believe that its like could be found (whence its name, 


THE RESTORATION 365 


the Undiscoverable Chamber, Chambre introuvable) and the 
members of its majority were called the “Ultras.” Elected while 
the shock of Waterloo and the public misfortunes were fresh 
in the minds of the people, this Chamber was passionately reac- 
tionary; it hated the Revolution as much under its republican 
as its Napoleonic form, and yet it was for all that no more docile 
to the government of Louis. It is of this Chamber that it was 
said that it was more royalist than the king, which should be 
taken in the sense that it wished to dictate his policy. Louis 
XVIII thought that France needed tactful handling and the 
Chamber was using language that might alarm many people 
and many interests. The government intended to remain the 
judge of the measures to be taken to punish the Bonapartist 
plots and to prevent Napoleon’s return. It had to reconstitute 
the finances that had been shaken by two invasions, the reéstab- 
lishment of which had been prepared for, after 1814, by Baron 
Louis, through basing credit upon the fulfillment of the engage- 
ments entered into by the former régimes. It was especially 
necessary to reassure the possessors of the nationalized proper- 
ties. A royalist Chamber would then have been wise not to 
increase the embarrassment of the government. It attempted, 
however, for the sake of imposing its own views, in a word, for 
the sake of governing to extend the prerogatives of parliament, 
to the detriment of the prerogatives of the crown. It wished 
the ministers to be its representatives to the king rather than 
the king’s representatives to them. This counter-revolutionary 
Chamber behaved very much like the Constituent Assembly. 
Tt would not consent to be an auxiliary to the royal authority, 
as the Charter had intended. It aimed at possessing the govern- 
ment. Chateaubriand, a rebellious royalist, published a sensa- 
tional brochure, The Monarchy According to the Charter, in an 
attempt to bring back an entirely parliamentary régime, with- 
out reserves and with the right to overturn ministers instead of 
merely to control them. These ultra-royalists, having become 
deputies, were ultra-liberals and they opened the way to the 
demands and agitations of the Left. We find here an old and 
well-known phenomenon; the Duke de Saint-Simon, if he had 


366 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


lived one hundred years later, would have belonged to this 
opposition. 

Thus there was in 1816 the strange spectacle of a Chamber 
of the Extreme Right in conflict with the king. It cost Louis 
a great deal to break with it, with what was most royalistic in 
France. But it was impossible to allow his sovereignty to be 
displaced. In 1814 the king had not yielded to the Senate of 
the Empire. He had held firmly to the principle that the 
Charter had been “granted” by him. If the Charter were to be 
revised on the initiative of the deputies, no matter what opin- 
ions they might hold, the work that Louis XVIII had ac- 
complished would be undone. In 1816, as the Chamber re- 
mained obstinate in opposing the ministry of Richelieu and de- 
termined to modify the electoral law, he decided to dissolve it 
rather than recognize the rule of the majority. It was a rup- 
ture between the crown and the Extreme Right. Then began the 
great strife between the different parties. At the elections which 
were conducted by Decazes, the king’s confidential adviser, 
the ministerial center triumphed with the support of the liber- 
als, who were only too happy at this unexpected chance which 
the ultras had furnished them. But the Left immediately be- 
came openly anti-dynastic, and showed Louis no gratitude for 
his policy of national unity and soon detached itself from the 
Center, upon which the government had hoped to rely. The 
representative régime was ushered in by many storms. Then 
the government was forced to perceive that in making use of 
the Left to oppose the Right, in order to follow a middle 
course, a moderate “middle of the road” policy, it had em- 
boldened and fortified the liberal party, which was a coalition of 
all the adversaries of the dynasty. The Left immediately com- 
bated such ministers as M. de Serre whom the Right accused of 
giving too many pledges to liberalism; and in this struggle the 
more or less avowed republicans and the Bonapartists were 
sometimes allied with the ultras. This agitation in parlia- 
ment and the press had as a consequence, in 1820, the assassina- 
tion of the nephew of Louis XVIII, the Duke de Berry by 
Louvel. This revealed the actual danger to the Republic and 


THE RESTORATION 367 


the government was led to become reconciled with the Right. 
To this change of attitude, the liberals responded by a new form 
of opposition, secret societies and the “Carbonari,” rioting and 
military plots in which some unfortunate noncommissioned offi- 
cers, such as the four sergeants of La Rochelle, allowed them- 
selves to be involved. The military elements, the former gen- 
erals of the Empire, were thinking of a new Vendémiaire or an- 
other Fructidor. The aging La Fayette himself, returning to 
the enthusiasms of 1789, dreamed of a pronunciamento, after 
the manner of the Spaniards. The coup d’état of December sec- 
ond, was in preparation from that time. The death of Napoleon 
at Saint Helena in 1821, moreover, served to unite, even more 
solidly, the republicans and the Bonapartists. The emperor 
became a legendary personage whose name was synonymous 
with liberty in spite of the “imperial despotism,’ and with 
grandeur in spite of Waterloo. Five years after her disasters, 
France had begun to forget their lesson. 

If we judge the Restoration by its results, we find that the 
French had had peace and prosperity and that they had been 
well-nigh insensible to these benefits. The Restoration had been 
an honorable and wise régime which had twice merited its 
name since France, after having received some very severe 
shocks, had quickly righted herself. Many of those who had 
helped to overturn her, regretted it later. But there was no 
more good will toward the monarchy than there had been be- 
fore. The government learned one thing which was not under- 
stood until long after; it was that a Chamber, elected through 
a very restricted suffrage (many of the departments had hardly 
one hundred electors), is no more docile than others; it is 
rather less so. No one at that time wanted universal suffrage ; 
some because they thought it revolutionary, others because they 
thought, like the Constituents of 1789, that only a rich man 
could have an independent opinion and that wealth alone would 
assure an honest and free vote. Indeed, the rate-paying electors 
were less tractable than other bodies had been , and the fact that 
the government had expressed its preference for a particular 
candidate had no influence upon them. The spirit of opposi- 


368 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


tion which was steadily growing in the “haute bourgeoisie,” to- 
gether with the hatred of the nobles and the “priest party,” was 
of the same nature as that of the former parliaments and of the 
former feudal aristocracy. Among these malcontents it will 
suffice to mention the financier, Lafitte, a man who had met 
with extraordinary success. 

Louis XVIII died in September, 1824. It is due him to ad- 
mit frankly that he had fulfilled the task for which he had been 
twice recalled to the throne. After having prevented the dis- 
memberment of France, he had restored her to her rank. In 
1818, at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, France had joined the 
Holy Alliance, created as a safeguard for the treaties of Vienna 
just as the League of Nations had been created to safeguard the 
treaties of 1919. Three years after Waterloo the French terri- 
tory had been evacuated by the foreign armies and the indem- 
nity reduced by more than four hundred millions, in spite of the 
rage and violence of Prussia. Louis XVIII was aware that 
France had always regretted the disappearance of the unstable 
conquests of the Revolution, the loss of Belgium and the left 
bank of the Rhine. He knew that a longing for military glory 
was making a part of the French restless and was leading them 
towards liberalism. Nevertheless he resisted royalists like 
Chateaubriand who were urging him to a venturesome for- 
eign policy, as well as the Czar Alexander who in return for the 
services which he had rendered France in reducing the demands 
of the other Allies, was attempting to induce France to follow 
him to the East. The only undertaking which Louis did 
decide upon was the intervention in Spain in 1823, for the pur- 
pose of putting an end to a revolution and reéstablishing Ferdi- 
nand VII upon the throne. His policy in doing this was to 
continue that by which France had formerly established a Bour- 
bon at Madrid, in order that Spain might not fall under the 
influence of an enemy power. This expedition, conducted with 
sufficient skill to draw a large part of the Spaniards to the side 
of the French, was consequently not very costly and contrasted 
so strongly with the failure of Napoleon in the Peninsula 
that it restored confidence to the country and to the army which 


THE RESTORATION 369 


became reconciled to the white flag, that is, with the king. It 
had been said after the taking of the Trocadero that this time 
the “Restoration was accomplished.” Louis had perhaps failed 
in only one thing; that was when he believed that through the 
Charter he would be able to give to France a parliamentary 
régime like that of England, leaving the monarchy and the 
sovereign aside from and above all parties. It was not thus that 
the French bourgeoisie conceived and conducted parliamentary 
struggles. Its inevitable tendency was to drag the king into 
them. Louis had already come to know the extent of his illu- 
sion. Jlis successor was to be even more unfortunate. 

More attractive than Louis XVIII, but less prudent also, his 
brother, the Count d’Artois, Charles X, did not know, as he did, _ 
how to be patient. He suffered and grew impatient over the re- 
proach that liberals hurled at the monarchy, and which was 
their most efficacious weapon, that it had returned in “the 
caissons of the enemy,” and that it had given its support to the 
shameful treaty of 1815. To efface these treaties as much as 
possible and to give grandeur and glory to France was the 
dominant idea of Charles X. He believed that he could in that 
way disarm an opposition whose “systematic” character he did 
not perceive. There then came a new generation who had not 
seen the Revolution, and hardly the Empire, the memory of 
which was transfigured and poetized with the receding of the 
years. To this eager, impatient, ambitious generation, of which 
Thiers was the representative, it would have been necessary to 
give immediate satisfaction. It would have at least been neces- 
sary, in order to take away its strongest argument, the “na- 
tional” argument, to tear up the treaties of 1815 and take back 
the natural frontiers. This was the policy which Chateaubriand 
recommended without considering the external obstacles; and 
when he was not the minister, Chateaubriand did not fear as 
in the Chambre introuvable, to take the rôle of the opposition. 
This policy was, however, the one which Charles X attempted 
to apply. His failure started the Revolution of 1830. 

Six months before the death of Louis XVIII, the Right had 
won a great victory in the elections. Villèle, who had been made 


370 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


prime minister, was a wise, experienced and an excellent ad- 
ministrator; just the minister for this time of restoration. The 
opposition which he encountered not only from the Left, but 
from such royalists of the Extreme Right as Chateaubriand, was 
a crying injustice, the manifestation of an incurable party 
spirit. Villèle governed with a majority of the Right, among 
whom were some violent ultras. Some of them went so far as 
to demand the reéstablishment of the parliament of the old 
régime, which had contributed so much to bring on the Revo- 
lution. Among the Catholics a few of the most extreme de- 
manded an out and out theocracy of which Lamennais, before 
he broke with the Church and became a demagogue, was the 
theorist. Of all the unreasonable conceptions which can form 
in the mind of man, there were few which had not appeared 
during this time of literary and political romanticism. And 
there were as many romantics of the Right as of the Left. 
Villéle, a man of common sense, opposed to all exaggeration, 
disregarded the demands of the hot-heads, and when it was 
necessary to yield to the majority, took care that his conces- 
sions should not be harmful. A project for the rehabilitation 


of the law of primogeniture was imposed upon him, but it was — 


killed by the Chamber of peers themselves; although it was 
only a question of avoiding the dismemberment of the great 
landed properties, and although the example of the English was 
cited, this abortive project was none the less represented by the 
Left as a menace to all the families of France. The law of 
sacrilege, which was voted but never applied, became another 
grievance of the liberals against Villèle. This very politic idea, 
endorsed by all thinking men, of indemnifying the French 
whose property had been confiscated for the crime of emigra- 
tion, was opposed under the party cry “a billion for the ém1- 
grés,” although this billion had been reduced to 625 millions. It 
had been an attempt to settle an irritating dispute and defini- 
tively to reassure the holders of confiscated property, always 
fearful of the claims of the former proprietors. This measure 
of social peace which was deemed insufficient by the Extreme 


Right, was denounced by the Left as a provocation. Another 


THE RESTORATION 371 


thing still more unbelievable was that the conversion of rentes 
rendered possible because the public funds, thanks to the order 
of the finances and to prosperity, had reached par, loosed 
against Villéle the fury of the bourgeoisie, although this opera- 
tion, often resorted to since, was perfectly regular and in keep- 
ing with the interests of both the state and the nation. We see 
in this something akin to the blind passion of the rentiers 
ot Oo. 

But it was not for these reasons that Villéle was most vio- 
lently attacked. His moderation and his prudence he carried 
into his foreign policy. He remained faithful to the method 
which, after 1814 and 1815, had allowed France to resume her 
rank and establish her security. If the treaty of Vienna was 
cruel for her, her own losses had for counterpart that expansion 
had been denied to other powers. To overturn Europe, to en- 
large Prussia and Russia, in order to establish her own natural 
frontiers, a policy taken over from 1795, seemed bad to Villèle, 
He tactfully refused when the Czar urged him, in the name of 
the principles of the Holy Alliance, to intervene in the distant 
Spanish colonies of South America in order to bring them back 
under the authority of Spain. He resisted when Nicholas I 
was asking for French aid in dismembering the Turkish Em- 
pire. The Greeks had revolted against the Ottoman domina- 
tion and we can hardly understand to-day the philhellenic en- 
thusiasm of France at that time. Villèle had sent a squadron 
to keep watch of Russia and check any move on her part and 
to hinder any reopening of the Eastern question. The battle of 
Navarino (1827) in which the Turkish fleet was destroyed, was 
fought against his will and his instructions. That day de- 
termined the fall of Villéle. The person who was defeated was 
far less the sultan than the French minister, who was too 
pacific for those of both the Right and Left, who confounded 
with the romantic cause of Greece, that of glory and liberty. 
It had been said that the victory of Navarino was the victory 
of French public opinion. It carried with it a new orientation 
both within and without. Navarino occurred in October. Jn 
November Villèle was defeated in the elections and not only the 


372 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


liberals gloried in his fall. Many of the royalists rejoiced as 
well and Chateaubriand, always a partisan of grandiose action 
in Europe, overwhelmed this really reasonable minister who 
“wished to attach this nation to the soil and set it firmly upon 
its foundations.” 

From then on, the advance toward the Revolution of 1830 
was rapid. To the new Chamber, with a majority of liberals, 
Charles X gave a minister who ought to have satisfied it. 
Martignac resumed the “middle of the road” policy, which had 
been that of the Duke of Richelieu, of Decazes, and of Serre. 
Bitterly opposed by the Extreme Right who treated him as a 
revolutionary, and by the Left who regarded him as a reaction- 
ary, no matter what concessions he made, Martignac finally 
quitted the ministry in 1829. And it has been said of this 


period that, in differing degrees, “all the parties had commit- | 


ted faults.” In the meantime Charles had made up his mind. 
He was convinced that it was impossible to govern with the 
Chamber. Observing public opinion, he had remarked a grow- 
ing return to the spirit of glory and of conquest. His plan was 
to satisfy this desire of the French nation, to wipe out the 


treaties of 1815, and regain the national boundaries. Then the 


monarchy, freed from a persistent but unjust reproach, would 
be sufficiently glorious and sufficiently popular to impose its 
will upon the Assemblies or even to govern without them. A 
great success outside of France would restore the king’s author- 
ity and would avert the danger of revolution. Charles X for- 
got that the treaty of Westphalia had not prevented the Fronde 
and that revenge for the treaty of Paris had not saved 
Louis XVI. 

It was to Polignac that the king confided this plan. In 1829 
the moment seemed propitious for a revision of Europe. The 
Belgians, forcibly united with Holland, were rebelling. Nicho- 


las I pursued his ideas of conquest in the Orient. Through an ~ 


understanding with Russia, which would abandon to her the 
Balkans and the Turkish Empire, France would be able to re- 
gain the left bank of the Rhine and she might perhaps be able 


to reannex Belgium. Whatever may have been the advantage | 





THE RESTORATION 373 


of this plan, so dangerous from many points of view, it was 
practically that which Villéle had cast aside. It fell through 
because of the refusal of Prussia who, always jealous of any 
expansion on the part of France, anticipated Charles X and 
joined forces with the Czar against Austria. The latter on its 
side had shown itself hostile to the expansions of Russia. 

Even if Charles X and Polignac had succeeded in their vast 
undertaking, they would hardly have been sure of disarming 
their enemies within France. They would always have en- 
countered increased demands. A new opposition had appeared, 
almost openly anti-dynastic. It was no longer, as under Louis 
XVIII, to plots that they had recourse. They addressed them- 
selves to public opinion through a campaign of the press which 
Thiers was directing in the Natzonal, a title which was as 
good as a program, nationalism and liberalism then being merely 
one and the same idea. They pretended to be defending the 
Charter against the king. Above all, in order not to frighten 
people by a threat of a return to the Revolution or to the 
Empire, they recalled the Revolution of 1688 and the substitu- 
tion of William of Orange for the Stuarts and suggested a 
simple “changing of persons.” 

The ministry of Polignac had been formed in the absence of 
the Chamber. When on March 2, 1830, the session opened, the 
Chamber definitely demanded, in its Address to the king, the 
dismissal of the cabinet, the same thing that the “undiscover- 
able Chamber”’—the government of the majority—had de- 
manded. The Chamber “was letting the king down.” He 
replied by dissolving the Chamber. At the elections which took 
place in June and July, the rate-paying bourgeoisie returned 
out of 428 men elected, 274 partisans of the Address. These 
elections did not disturb Charles X. If he could not announce 
that France had regained Belgium and the left bank of the 
Rhine, he offered a splendid compensation—the conquest of 
Algiers, a forerunner of the conquest of Algeria, which had 
been decided as early as the month of March in spite of the 
remonstrances of England. On July fifth, the French troops 
were masters of Algiers; the elections had shown no effects of 


374 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


this news. However, Charles X and Polignac believed them- 
selves sufficiently strong in their success to break the new Cham- 
ber and govern according to article 14 of the Charter, by “cer- 
tain ordinances for the safety of the state.” They took espe 
cial measures against the press which did not hesitate, even 
the “National” press, to publish information liable to injure 
the African expedition. The war censorship, which seems so 
natural to us now, in 1830 made people cry out against an at- 
tempt to restrain public liberty. 

The king and his minister, by a strange imprudence, took no 
notice of the agitation which was beginning to appear in Paris. 
Charles X was convinced that it was only a matter of legal 
resistance, as he himself, supported by article 14, was within 
his legal rights. The very day that the rioting broke out, he 
left unconcernedly for the chase. No precautions had been 
taken. The minister of war was at some watering place. The 
garrison of Paris had been reduced to fourteen thousand men, 
some of the troops having been taken for the campaign at 
Algiers. Regiments that could be counted on were at Saint- 
Omer because of certain affairs pertaining to Belgium and still 
others were attending ceremonies in some of the provincial 
towns. On July twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, and twenty- 
ninth, the insurgents, coming from the suburbs and the section 
of the schools, took possession of Paris, put up barricades, and 
hoisted the tricolor, while the bourgeoisie allowed them to do it. 
This insurrection had something in common with the ideas of 
the doctrinaires, of the liberals who had drawn up the Address, 
and of the middle classes who had elected them. It was an ex- 
plosion of sentiments which Charles X had wished to appease 
through the glory of conquest; but Algeria was a ridiculous di- 
version for a people so addicted to tradition. The republican and 
Bonapartist ideas were confounded with the hatred for the trea- 
ties of 1815. “The combatants of the days of July,” said Emile 
Bourgeois, “were not engaged in a riot like that of 1789. They 
had taken up arms against Europe at least as much as against 
Charles X and dreamed, above all, of a victorious Republic and 
of the Empire.” 


THE RESTORATION 315 


The king, having retired to Rambouillet, abdicated in favor 
of his grandson, the Duke of Bordeaux, and named the Duke of 
Orléans lieutenant general of the kingdom. That would have 
been the politic solution, and Guizot realized it later. It would 
have avoided a division which was immediately to weaken the 
new monarchy—the division between the partisans of the elder 
branch of the Bourbons and those of the younger branch. But 
the precedent of 1688 haunted the spirits of those who, lke 
Thiers, had fanned the flame and were holding themselves in 
reserve for the moment when the insurrection should have tri- 
umphed. These were the ones who offered the crown to Louis- 
Philippe, Duke of Orléans. This solution, in keeping with 
their tastes, had for the politicians, the advantage of setting 
aside the republican régime, which would unquestionably have 
meant war even more than anarchy did, and would have brought 
France into a disastrous conflict with Europe. Thus the re- 
publicans and Bonapartists had made the revolution and the 
constitutional party had confiscated it. The insurgents sub- 
mitted to another monarchy. And, as one of them said, what- 
ever the victors of the “three glorious’ days had hoped for, 
Republic or Empire, it would have “to be postponed.” 


CHAPTER XIX 
THE MONARCHY OF JULY 


One of the greatest illusions in politics is to believe that one 
has built for eternity. The men who had called to the throne 
a Bourbon of the younger branch were convinced that they had 
found the ideal solution. The Duke of Orléans was the son of 
Philippe Egalité. His father had been a regicide. He himself 
had fought at Jemmapes. In his person he reconciled the Revo- 
lution and the old régime, the past and the present. France 
thought that she had reached port. An historian, much ad- 
mired by the middle classes, Augustin Thierry, published a 
work in which he demonstrated that the whole history of France 
had been tending towards the coming of this bourgeois royalty. 

The July Monarchy bore within itself one great weakness. 
It was born on the barricades. It had arisen from a riot that 
turned into a revolution. And this revolution had been taken 
away from those who made it by men of politics who had not 
appeared in the scuffle, who even had a horror of it, but who, 
having a ready-made plan, had profited by events to impose it 
upon the country. This plan was an artificial one. The riot 
had broken out in Paris and although it had been understood 
since 1789 that Paris gave the tone to France, the great mass 
of the country had had no hand in the overthrow of Charles X 
or the founding of the new régime. As for the liberals who 
had substituted the Duke of Orléans for the dethroned sovereign, 
they represented the “party of law,” the tax-paying electors, 
that is about two hundred thousand people in all. This then 
is what was to happen: the victors of the Days of July, republi- 
cans and Bonapartists together, were to be disappointed and 
there would remain the possibilities for agitation and rioting. 


On the other hand, the Charter of 1814, slightly revised, was 
376 


THE MONARCHY OF JULY 377 


considered as the ultimate truth, and the régime remained 
faithful to the system which accorded suffrage only to the rich. 
Louis-Philippe not being the legal hereditary sovereign like 
Louis XVIII, did not, however, lean for support upon the 
plebiscite as Napoleon had done. This is the essential point 
in the understanding of what was to follow, because it is upon 
the question of the right of suffrage that the Monarchy of July 
fell after eighteen years. 

Theories change and it seems surprising that authentic lib- 
erals should have been so obstinately hostile to universal suf- 
frage. In general this hostility has been attributed to a spirit 
of distrust and fear with regard to the masses, and to the idea 
that the bourgeois electors, those “citizens who possess,’ are 
more conservative than the others. This opinion was undoubt- 
edly in favor with those who considered universal suffrage as a 
revolutionary force and restricted suffrage as the lesser of two 
evils; in which matter they were greatly mistaken. It is sur- 
prising that after the stormy experience of the parliamentary 
system under the Restoration a spirit as penetrating as that 
of Louis XVIII, a character as enterprising and even adven- 
turous as that of Charles X, and an intelligence as subtle as 
that of Louis-Philippe should not have discerned this error. 
But the liberals reasoned otherwise, and from their point of 
view they reasoned better. Universal suffrage seemed to them 
like an immovable weight, if not a retrogade force. They en- 
tertained the same opinions as the Constituents of 1790 who 
had divided the French into active citizens, or those who voted, 
and passive citizens, or those unworthy to vote because of their 
condition. Robespierre himself had refused the right of suf- 
frage to “servants,” in such a way as to exclude especially the 
wage-earning farmers. Now France was in great part rural. It 
seemed impossible to the liberals to conduct a new, bold, and 
generous policy with these people of the soil who were neces- 
sarily attached to their material interests and who were limited 
to the horizons of their villages. In order to understand and 
love progress, to follow a régime of discussion, it was necessary 
to have men who were free from the vulgar preoccupations of 


378 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


life, and inaccessible to such paltry considerations as those to 
which the ignorant and needy are subjected. A man votes ac- 
cording to principles only when he is independent, so they 
reasoned. And whence comes this independence if not from 
wealth? In virtue of this axiom, they came to the conclusion 
that those who were soldiers, lacking money to buy a substitute, 
had no free judgment and should not vote concerning peace and 
war. 

In the meantime, Louis-Philippe was pursuing the same 
policy of peace in foreign matters that the Restoration had in- 
augurated. He was to be accused in the same way of humiliat- 
ing France and of being the slave of the treaties of 1815. The 
Revolution of 1830 had hoisted the tricolor which signified the 
natural frontiers, the liberation of the peoples, revenge, and 
glory. Hence came the name, the “trovs glorieuses,” given to the 
three days of July. Edgar Quinet was to say later, “The Revo- 
lution surrendered its sword in 1815; it was thought that it 
would regain it in 1830.” Once more feelings were bruised and 
hopes deceived. The men who were responsible for this revolu- 
tion wanted action, “movement,” within and without. Louis- 
Philippe, who knew his Europe, saw that the danger of a rash 
foreign policy would be that it might reunite the Allies and 
restore the vigor of the pact of Chaumont. He took the part 
of moderation, of order, and of prudence, a policy which was 
called that of “resistance” as opposed to the policy of ‘‘move- 
ment.” The July Monarchy had arisen from a revolutionary 
movement, that is, it was warlike (for the two things are con- 
founded), yet it was to be conservative and pacific. It was to 
give satisfaction to the need for tranquillity, to the material 
interests which dominate the majority of men. But on the 
other hand it was to disappoint the eager spirits who were living 
on the memories of the Republic and the Empire. Nor could 
it count for support on the masses, especially the rural com- 
munities, to whom this policy should have been pleasing, in so 
far as it was they who at that time paid the costs of war much 
more than they do now. 

Thus in obstinately rejecting universal suffrage, the July 


% 


THE MONARCHY OF JULY 379 


Monarchy deprived itself of the large and solid base which the 
Restoration had also lacked. It deprived itself of the support 
of the most conservative part of the population at a time when 
its policy was to be conservative; and of the most pacific part 
when its policy was to be founded upon the maintenance of 
peace. Moreover, the Monarchy, through its attachment to a 
narrowly restricted suffrage, wounded the feelings of a large 
part of the middle class in whose image this régime seemed 
to have been created. The national guard, destined to defend 
and maintain it, was composed of men who paid a direct tax 
but did not all pay enough to become electors. In the case of 
the small merchants, the doctors, the lawyers, and the intel- 
lectuals, this policy wounded the sentiment of equality, so dear 
to the heart of the bourgeoisie. They were driven to desire, at 
least for themselves, the right of suffrage from which they 
were separated by a few francs’ worth of taxes. Thus the gov- 
ernment was making malcontents while the electors and the 
elected of the rich bourgeoisie were returning Chambers just as 
intractable as those of the Restoration. As we shall soon see, 
this combination of errors caused the Revolution of 1848. 

The beginning of this new régime was troubled. The dis- 
turbances amidst which it had arisen oppressed it and were 
begetting consequences. It was at first necessary to yield to the 
demands of the insurgents and Louis-Philippe gave the ministry 
to the banker, Lafitte, and to the party of “movement.” But 
already Louis-Philippe had to resist the pressure of the mob 
who were demanding capital punishment for the ministers of 
Charles X and it was only through great effort that their lives 
were saved. They were finally only condemned to prison. But 
it was, above all, in the matter of foreign affairs that the gov- 
ernment had to be on its guard. Considering the language of 
the revolutionaries of 1830, the Allies might very well fear 
that France, having returned to the tricolor, would very soon 
resume her former career of conquest and they were resolved 
to keep her within the frontiers of 1815. Louis-Philippe had to 
reassure them in secret. 

Already a serious question had arisen. Before the Days 


380 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


of July, the Belgians had revolted against the Dutch domina- 
tion. The events at Paris had encouraged them to free them- 
selves from their masters and they had even gone so far as to 
seek the aid and protection of France. Had the moment not 
come to end, under the best conditions, one of the greatest ques- 
tions of French history, and one that had never been settled, 
that of Flanders? Was it not the moment to annex Belgium 
since she seemed to wish it? But England would not have per- 
mitted this annexation now any more than in 1792 or at any 
other date whatsoever, and although the masses did not appre- 
ciate this fact any more than the Revolution had, Louis-Philippe 
understood it perfectly. ~He had immediately sent to London, 
as ambassador, the man whom Louis XVIII had chosen for the 
Congress of Vienna. Talleyrand was again to find a solution 
and to reconcile peace with the dignity and security of France, 
a task rendered difficult by the “ardent party’ which was agi- 
tating Paris. The policy of Louis-Philippe and Talleyrand has 
rightly been compared to that of Fleury who, a century earlier, 
in spite of intrigues, indignation, and scorn had safeguarded 
the peace of the country. 

These two men managed this old Belgian problem, this 
“stumblingblock of Europe” in the most satisfactory manner 
for all concerned. In spite of Belgium herself, who had for- 
gotten for the moment (through her hatred and fear of Hol- 
land) that she never wished to become a French province, they 
made her into an independent nation. The Belgian national 
congress wanted a French prince, the Duke of Nemours; or fail- 
ing this, the son of Eugéne de Beauharnais. The Duke of 
Nemours was elected king, February 3, 1831, but Louis- 
Philippe refused this crown for his son. To accept it would have 
meant a disguised annexation and certain war with the other 
powers. It was already difficult enough to revise the treaty of 
1815 on this point and relieve Belgium of the Dutch domination. 
If an insurrection of the Poles had not broken out at this mo- 
ment, paralyzing Russia and with her, Prussia, it is not even 
certain that the Belgians would have been freed. Poland was 
crushed, but this diversion had saved Belgium just as, under 


RÉ EE ne mg 


THE MONARCHY OF JULY 381 


the Revolution, it had saved France. An independent Belgium 
was formed, and because the July Monarchy, at the Confer- 
ence of London, had played the same réle and followed the same 
policy that the Restoration had followed at the Congress at 
Vienna. The powers had wished this free Belgium to be neu- 
tral and her neutrality guaranteed by Europe in order to pre- 
vent France from ever annexing her. This neutrality was di- 
rected against France and, in keeping with the old treaty of 
Utrecht, was to serve as a “‘barrier’ to her ambitions. Louis- 
Philippe accepted it, signed it, and respected it. Eighty years 
later it was to be Prussia, also a signatory and guarantor, who 
violated it. Thus the precaution taken against France turned 
against Germany by determining England, who was hesitating, 
to intervene. In the end it worked to the profit of France. It 
has taken nearly a century for the service rendered by Louis- 
Philippe to be understood and appreciated. In 1831 his re 
nunciation of Belgium was considered as treachery and a cow- 
ardly abandonment of the revolutionary and Napoleonic tradi- 
tions. In accepting Leopold I, a Coburg, and England’s candi- 
date, as King of Belgium, the French king reserved for himself 
the right to give him his own daughter, Louise, in marriage. 
In 1832 he again saved Belgium, threatened by a return offen- 
sive of the Dutch, and a French army delivered Antwerp. All 
sorts of friendly bonds were being formed with the young nation. 
In the meantime, England’s attention had been diverted from 
the French occupation of Algiers by her anxiety over the fate 
of the mouth of the Scheldt and France had been able to get a 
foothold on the other shore of the Mediterranean, and to organ- 
ize the conquest undertaken by Charles X. Algeria at that 
time seemed a very weak and ridiculous compensation for the 
lost conquests of the Republic and the Empire, and Charles 
X received little gratitude for it. 

Louis-Philippe had accepted the throne—his adversaries both 
of the Right and the Left said that he had usurped it—in order 
to save France from anarchy and war and to preserve the dig- 
nity and future of the nation. He continued the Restoration 
with the tricolor. Eight months after the Days of July, Lafitte 


382 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


and the party of “movement” were exhausted and gave way to 
Casimir-Perier, of the party of “resistance.” The new mon- 
archy had maintained peace with its neighbors. Within, order 
was fast being restored although not without trouble and some 
violent shocks. The rioting, frustrated in its victory over 
Charles X, broke out several times. The break with the forms 
and signs of the old monarchy, as shown by the name Louis- 
Philippe I which the king had adopted instead of that of 
Philippe VII advised by the doctrinaires, as well as many other 
details intended to show that this monarchy of the Bourbons 
of the younger branch did not resemble that of the Bourbons of 
the elder branch, together with numberless concessions to liberal 
and anticlerical opinion, still had not been enough. Veritable 
insurrections followed the pillaging of churches and the sacking 
of the archbishop’s residence. The fire of 1830 was still un- 
quenched. The funeral of General Lamarque was made the 
occasion, by the republicans and Bonapartists who were still 
united, for taking up arms. Almost at the same time the 
Duchess of Berry had attempted to stir up the Vendée. The 
legitimists were as irreconcilable as the revolutionists. At 
Lyons, a first insurrection of a socialist character had been re- 
pressed. Another, much more serious, broke out in 1834 and 
was crushed in its turn, not without a loud ery from Paris 
where the Society of the Rights of Man aroused its adherents. 
Paris then saw what should have happened during the Days of 
June and under the Commune. The anger of the threatened 
bourgeoisie, the fury of the national guard, joined with the regu- 
lar army, gave no quarter. The insurgents were cut down as 
malefactors. 

The “massacre of the rue Transnonain,” memory of which 
long remained, was the forerunner of social wars in which the 
middle class defended itself with energy. This violent and 
spontaneous reaction had its influence upon the Monarchy. The 
government also defended itself and withdrew more and more 
from its revolutionary origins, just as the French bourgeoisie, 
in spite of its liberal opinions, had shown an aversion for dis- 
order. The king then set about pursuing the republicans and 


THE MONARCHY OF JULY 383 


punishing their conspiracies. In 1835 the unsuccessful attempt 
of Fieschi against the life of the king justified new measures 
of repression. As after the assassination of the Duke of Berry, 
the liberty of the press was restricted. 

However, this bourgeoisie, so resolved to defend itself, was 
very undisciplined. The Chambers which it elected, which 
represented only the rich, were no more reasonable than those 
of the Restoration. The battle of ambitions and of parties and 
the opposition to the government continued as before. Speak- 
ing after 1848, Sainte-Beuve said: “After all has been said and 
done, it would still be interesting to examine whether the ca- 
tastrophe was not provoked by these obstinate and noisy quar- 
rels inside an assembly against whose doors there was often 
pressure exerted but which were never opened or even half 
opened.” This Chamber, the result of a suffrage restricted to 
only the propertied classes who wished to yield nothing of their 
moneyed privilege, was above all the scene of personal rivalries 
and bitter conflicts for the control of the ministry. Within a 
few years there was a succession of men ambitious to shine; 
Broglie after Guizot, Thiers after Broglie, all those who had 
contributed to the downfall of the other monarchy because they 
did not find their place in it sufficiently illustrious. To the new 
monarchy they had given the motto and condition, “The King 
reigns but does not govern.”” After six years of this dangerous 
instability, Louis-Philippe undertook to correct the effects of 
the parliamentary régime and to govern himself through men 
who were in his confidence. The last experiment of a cabinet 
designated by the majority was that of Thiers in 1836. Won 
over to the idea of conservatism not only in France but in 
Europe, Thiers attempted a reconciliation with Austria which 
was to be crowned by the marriage of the Duke of Orléans with 
an Austrian archduchess. The refusal of the court of Vienna 
was viewed in the light of a personal check by Thiers and had 
the effect of turning him towards liberalism. Changing his 
policy from top to bottom, he was ready to enter into a conflict 
with Metternich for the sake of intervening in favor of the 
Spanish liberals when Louis-Philippe, always anxious to main- 


384 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


tain peace, stopped him. Thiers fell in his turn. Then the 
king called to the ministry a man after his own heart, Molé, 
who would carry out his plans. A régime of what was im- 
mediately called personal government began and the systematic 
opposition which the Bourbons of the elder branch had en- 
countered, began also. Six years after the barricades, France 
had progressed only thus far. 

Through a curious coincidence, this was the year in which a 
man appeared who was one day to govern France much more 
personally than Louis-Philippe and that with the consent of 
the country. The King of Rome, who had become the Duke of 
Reichstadt, died in 1832-and the heir to the Napoleonic name 
was a nephew of the emperor, son of Louis, King of Holland, 
and of Hortense de Beauharnais. Who would have dreamed of 
a political future for Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, an obscure 
young man, whose existence was scarcely known? When he at- 
tempted to start a revolt in the garrison at Strassburg, his at- 
tempt was not even taken seriously. The government contented 
itself with sending the pretender to America and the jury ac- 
quitted his accomplices. The Napoleonic idea seemed to be dead 
and its representative a ridiculous adventurer. If any one had 


prophesied the restoration of the Empire, he would have been _ 


thought a madman. 

This was the time when the parliamentary chiefs, the Duke 
de Broglie, Guizot, Thiers, and Odilon Barrot, supported by the 
legitimists and the republicans, were carrying on a campaign 
against Molé, the “favorite,” the man of the “palace.” This 
was the “immoral and fatal coalition” regretted later by those 
who had formed it. After ten years had passed, the same men, 
with few exceptions, were weakening the régime which they 
had founded just as they had undermined the Restoration and 
by the same methods. The theme had not changed; the Mon- 
archy was accused of humiliating France before the other na- 
tions, of ‘weakening the national policy.” Contemporaries 
themselves were struck by the similarity. When Molé in 1839 
had been beaten at the elections, and, instead of obtaining a ma- 
jority, lost thirty seats, everybody recalled the case of Martignac. 





THE MONARCHY OF JULY 385 


The people thought there was to be another 1830 and the revolu- 
tionaries, led by Barbès, attempted to arouse Paris. The bar- 
ricades lasted no more than a day but it was evident that the 
parliamentary agitation had aroused the revolutionary party. 
This alarm did not serve as a lesson to the Chamber who were 
opposing Marshal Soult, chosen by the king, just as they had 
opposed Molé. The latter, strange to say, became reconciled 
with Thiers and joined the opposition. There were a few 
months of open warfare directed not only against the cabinet 
but against the crown. The king was reproached for the weak- 
ness, that is to say the prudence, of his European policy and 
they haggled with him, even over the civil list. Thus the July 
Monarchy was discredited and weakened by those who had made 
it, by those propertied office holders who were sawing off the 
branch upon which they were sitting. 

Louis-Philippe had been driven back to his entrenchments 
just as Charles X had been. More prudent than he, he yielded 
and in 1840 recalled Thiers who had conducted this campaign. 
A new experiment was beginning and was to lead to a serious 
crisis, through the spirit of adventure which the king had so 
feared in this minister imposed upon him by the Chamber. 
Thiers, an historian, had revived the memories of the Revolu- 
tion and of the Empire. He wished to make himself illustrious 
by an active foreign policy whatever might be the risk of a 
European conflict. Like Chateaubriand, under Louis XVIII, 
he urged the Monarchy to rival the glory of Napoleon. Thiers 
immediately proposed to bring back from Saint Helena the re- 
mains of the emperor and charged the Prince de Joinville with 
this mission as though to associate the royal family itself with 
the rehabilitation and exaltation of the Empire. The return of 
the emperor’s body thrilled the imagination of the people. It 
added, as Lamartine had prophetically announced, another ele- 
ment to the almost general conspiracy of literature which had 
given itself up to the cult of the emperor. The return of these 
ashes was also part of a program, that of an “energetic” atti- 
tude, a sort of defiance to the foreign powers, a revenge for the 
treaties of 1815. 


386 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


This policy, so rash, and so dangerous that Thiers’ party 
was called the party of bravado, was nevertheless supported by 
public opinion. But by public opinion was meant the bour- 
geoisie, the deputies, and the newspapers. The great mass of 
the country remained unchanged and quite removed from these 
debates. It was not even consulted. We can well understand 
that Thiers, at this moment more than at any other, was hostile 
to universal suffrage. He knew that rural France would give 
its support to a pacific policy—that of the king—because it was 
not possible to interest the peasant in the Egyptian Pasha, 
Mehemet Ali, whose cause was arousing almost as much en- 
thusiasm as that of Greece had done. For several years now 
the exploits of Mehemet Ali, the Oriental conqueror, had re- 
sounded throughout Europe adding to the Eastern question, 
which had been open ever since the eighteenth century, a danger- 
ous element by menacing Turkey in the south while Russia was 
threatening her from the north. Until this time the July 
Monarchy had attempted to play the rôle of mediator between 
Russia and England, always rivals in the Orient. The French 
made a principle of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, as 
an element of European equilibrium, the idea which had been 
that of Talleyrand since the Congress of Vienna—to compen- 
sate France for the abandonment of her conquests by forbidding 
conquests to the other powers. Thiers radically changed this 
method. What he wanted in the Orient was a success through 
the victory of the hero Mehemet Ali, by persuading the Sultan 
of Constantinople to give Syria to the Egyptian conqueror. 
This independent action, immediately discovered by England, 
brought from her a violent response; a coalition against Me- 
hemet Ali, but in reality against France, who was accused of 
disturbing the peace of Europe. And this coalition was of the 
four great powers: England, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. 
The treaty of July 15, 1840, renewed the pact of Chaumont. It 
meant war, the war which Louis-Philippe had feared, the un- 
equal conflict “of one against four.” By the explosion of war- 
like sentiments which took place among the French, we can 
judge of their illusions and of their ignorance of their danger. 


ee ee ee D ee ee ETS 


THE MONARCHY OF JULY 387 


Heinrich Heine observed in Paris, “a joyous enthusiasm for 
the war rather than any consternation; the common watchword 
is ‘war against perfidious Albion.’ ” Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, 
a no less keen observer, chose this moment for a new manifesta- 
tion; he landed at Boulogne whence his uncle had formerly 
threatened the English power. This time he was imprisoned in 
the fortress of Ham from which he soon escaped. From this 
second foolish enterprise, his star was not to suffer. Thiers 
continued to work for him. 

However imprudent he may have been, Thiers understood 
that a conflict with England would be serious. He flattered 
himself that he could appease her and turn all of the efforts of 
France towards a war against Prussia and Austria, in which 
some easy victories would bring a revenge for Waterloo and 
destroy the treaty of 1815. At this time a German nationalism, 
as violent as in 1813, and at least equal in intensity to the 
French national sentiment, was an advance signal of the com- 
ing blows and invasions. In the same way, a hundred years 
earlier the anti-Austrian party had thrown France into a use- 
less war. It was thus that in 1792 the Girondists had opened 
the doors of war from people to people. In the meantime the 
enthusiasm among the French was such that it even affected the 
royal family itself. ‘It would be better,” said the Duke 
d’Orléans, “to perish on the Rhine or on the Danube than in the 
gutter of the rue Saint-Denis.” Almost alone, in spite of his 
minister, in spite of opinion, and in spite even of his own 
entourage, Louis-Philippe stood firm for peace, knowing that 
England would not permit him any more than she had per- 
mitted the Revolution or Napoleon I, to resume a policy of 
conquest. Defying unpopularity he interposed, reproved the 
warlike language of Thiers, and in the month of October 
obliged him to resign. 

This service which the king had rendered the country, the 
second after the founding of Belgian independence, exposed him 
more than ever to the reproach of having humiliated the na- 
tion. However, Louis-Philippe had spared it a continental war 
coupled with a naval one in which disaster would have been cer- 


388 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


tain. Scorned and insulted, the king would not even have re- 
ceived the support of the Chamber had not Guizot and a few 
men more clairvoyant than the rest, who understood the peril 
from which France had just escaped, been visited by remorse 
and renounced their opposition. Henceforth during the years 
which remained to the Monarchy of July before its downfall, 
it was with Guizot, who was resolved to repair the evil he had 
done, that Louis-Philippe governed. In the Chamber itself 
the king and his minister were supported by a majority which 
never surpassed a hundred votes. The opposition which their 
foreign policy encountered, based upon the “entente cordiale” 
with England, was of such violence and bad faith that we of to- 
day are astounded by it. Guizot, who understood the English 
and who had been ambassador at London, defined the entente 
cordiale as, “Independence with good understanding.” But the 
country did not forgive him for this agreement. Every incident, 
whether it had to do with the right-of-search or the Pritchard 
Affair (Pritchard was an English missionary who had been ex- 
pelled from Tahiti and England was claiming an indemnity) 
was the occasion for the most violent accusations. This Tahitian 
incident aroused public opinion to an unbelievable degree; in 
1844 the two countries were within a hair’s breadth of war “for 
the Queen Pomaré.” Jt was the same year in which Marshal 
Bugeaud, completing the conquest of Algeria, defeated at l’Isly 
the Moroccans who had come to the aid of Abd-el-Kader, the 
year in which the French fleet bombarded Tangiers. A colonial 
dispute in Oceania would have been absurd while England still 
remained so hostile to the French establishment in northern 
Africa. For the first time the public began to interest itself 
in Algerian affairs, in this slow and painful acquisition, and 
it was not even finished before the French people were demand- 
ing all of Morocco. Here again Louis-Philippe was accused 


of cowardice. A man of intelligence has said of this epoch, — 
“France was in a sentimental rather than a rational state of — 
mind.” These misunderstandings were to become more and — 
more aggravated while the Monarchy, already weakened from | 
so many causes, was to receive still another blow. In 1842 the 





THE MONARCHY OF JULY 389 


Duke of Orléans had been killed in a carriage accident. The 
king was seventy years old and the heir to the throne, the Count 
of Paris, was four. In case anything happened to the old king, 
the régime would no longer have any one to support it. 

If Louis-Philippe fell as Charles X had fallen, unexpectedly, 
his misfortune was nevertheless the effect of complex causes 
which had their origin in the rupture of the entente cordiale. 
Louis-Philippe and Guizot, following Talleyrand’s idea, had 
conceived this agreement as a guaranty of the stability and 
peace of Europe. But with the liberal party, a new minister, 
Palmerston, had come to power in England, who, abandoning 
the policy of conservatism in Europe to which England had been 
pledged since 1815, favored everywhere on the continent the 
revolutionary movements and the idea of nationality, in the 
thought that it would be to England’s advantage to take the 
lead. Thus Great Britain, after having so long held France 
in suspicion as the country of revolutions bent on conquest, now 
favored agitations which tended to overthrow the treaty of 
1815 in just those points which gave security to France. To 
arouse Germany and Italy and to work for the unity of those 
countries was to open a series of crises and create new perils 
from which the French would be the first to suffer. The situa- 
tion had changed from beginning to end. The entente cordiale 
lost its reason for being. It split over the affair of the Spanish 
marriages, Louis-Philippe and Guizot refusing to allow the 
Spanish throne to be taken away from the house of Bourbon, 
while Palmerston wished to set up a Coburg there, and was sup- 
porting the radical party in Spain. This party was long to 
cause much trouble in that country. The July Monarchy was 
wise in opposing the Spanish revolutions, since it was from them 
that was to arise the pretext, if not the cause, of the war of 
1870. When France had won the day and when in 1846 the 
young queen, Isabella, married the Duke of Cadiz and the 
infanta, the Duke of Montpensier, the entente cordiale was 
broken. 

It was then taken up again and adopted by the opposition, 
since England was putting herself at the head of the “free 


390 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


countries.” Thiers, exalting the policy for which he will a few 
years later reproach Napoleon III, flattered the public senti- 
ment by proclaiming himself a partisan of the liberation of the 
peoples. Of this campaign in which Thiers had the support 
of the republicans, M. Emile Bourgeois has justly said, “The 
adversaries of the Guizot cabinet did not perceive that, behind 
the ministry, they were dealing a blow at the dynasty and above 
all at France herself, and preparing for a European revolution 
more dangerous perhaps for an old nation through the un- 
bridling of the races, than the coalition of the people and the 
statesmen had been for Napoleon.” The Monarchy now sought 
peace and security through the aid of Austria. The warning 
of 1840 had revealed the true sentiments of Germany and now 
it was the King of Prussia who, making use of the language of 
liberalism, was openly putting himself at the head of a national 
movement for German unity, the greatest danger with which 
France could be menaced. Austria was anxious to prevent 
Prussia from dominating Germany, just as she was anxious, 
on account of her possessions in Italy, to prevent the union of 
Italy, in favor of which a movement was just starting. In order 
to prevent the unity of Germany, which Austria as a Germanic 
power could oppose better than France, without declaring her in- 
tentions, it was necessary to sacrifice the question of Italy. 
This was the policy upon which Metternich and Guizot agreed. 

Europe in 1847 was filled with symptoms of revolution, ac- 
companied by the awakening of nationalities, even before there 
had been any signs of revolution in France. The opposition 
accused the king and his minister “of betraying, through a new 
sort of Holy Alliance, the hopes and desires of the free peo- 
ples.” What the Monarchy was working for, above all else, was 
to preserve peace. But where could it find partisans for this 
pacific policy? In the masses which furnished the soldiers; 
and the masses were excluded from the vote, their influence did 
not count in public affairs. At the same time a campaign be- 
gan for the extension of the right of suffrage, a right then re- 
served to the rich bourgeoisie and now demanded by the intel- 
lectuals, the “men of capacity,” as they were called. Attacked 


a ee 


THE MONARCHY OF JULY 391 


every day for his foreign policy, and keeping his eye only on a 
Chamber where he had a majority, Guizot was not anxious to 
increase the opposition by the voices of those who represented 
especially the opinions of the liberal and the war party. He 
never thought of the antidote, of universal suffrage, nor of the 
support which a policy of peace would have found in the peas- 
ant masses. 

The unpopularity of Guizot among the bourgeoisie and the 
population of Paris was caused in the first place by his attitude 
on foreign matters. He increased it by his hostility to the elec- 
toral reform. Louis-Philippe, consulting only the Charter, 
kept a minister whom the Chamber did not overturn just as 
Charles X, invoking article 14, had kept Polignac. The Revo- 
lution of 1848, like that of 1830, broke out and succeeded by 
surprise and it was the bourgeois who had worked for the fall 
of the Monarchy created by them in their own image. The cam- 
paign for electoral reform had begun under the inoffensive form 
of banquets in which more and more seditious speeches had 
been delivered. Lamartine, at Mâcon, prophesied ‘the revolu- 
tion of contempt.” One of these banquets, having been for- 
bidden at Paris, gave place to a manifestation which the leaders 
of the Left, having become alarmed, vainly tried to suppress; 
the Parisian crowd was already getting beyond their control. 
The government, however, was taking no extraordinary precau- 
tions against this trouble that was brewing. For its own de- 
fense and that of the régime it counted upon the national guard. 
But while the barricades were being raised on February twenty- 
second, the legions of the guard took their posts, crying “Long 
life to the reform.” The guardians of order, instead of com- 
bating the rebellion, reénforced it. When Louis-Philippe was 
enlightened as to the disposition of the bourgeoisie, whom he 
had persisted in believing loyal, he decided to discharge Guizot, 
but it was too late. The insurrection, left to itself, had grown. 
It could be met only by force of arms, and that was not sufficient. 
A fusillade in the boulevard des Capucines before the Ministry 
of Foreign Affairs, that of Guizot, killed fifteen of the in- 
surgents and the parade of the bodies through the streets of 


392 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Paris increased the excitement of the mob. From that time on, 
a Thiers ministry and an Odilon Barrot ministry, proposed by 
the king, were of no avail. On February twenty-fourth, Marshal 
Bugeaud, who attempted to restore order, could not dominate 
the mob and the Tuileries were menaced. The parliamentary 
leaders involved in the disorder were as much surprised as the 
king himself by this accident. No more than in 1830 had the 
government foreseen the attack or prepared for its own de 
fense. Like Charles X, Louis-Philippe renounced the throne 
without appealing to the country, as soon as Paris had pro- 
nounced itself. Like him, also, he abdicated in favor of his 
grandson when a new régime had already been prepared in ad- 
vance. The Chamber was invaded at the moment when it had 
just acclaimed the Duchess of Orléans as regent and Odilon 
Barrot had just said, “Is it possible that any one would pretend 
to put again in question what we decided by the Revolution of 
July?” A few moments later the Republic was proclaimed. 


ee ee ee ee ee —— ee SE — 7 =" ad 





CHAPTER XX 


THE SECOND REPUBLIC AND THE SECOND EMPIRE 


In 1848, as in 1830, the Monarchy yielded without resistance 
to the Paris uprisings. In both cases it was not only the king 
who had abdicated but authority itself. But while, in 1830, 
the liberal bourgeoisie had been able to substitute Louis-Philippe 
for Charles X, in 1848 it had been taken unawares and this 
time the rebels had not allowed it to discount their revolu- 
tion. Whether it liked it or not, it had to accept the Republic, 
the very name of which evoked sorry enough memories in the 
minds of men who loved order. Thus there was panic side by 
side with extraordinary enthusiasm. Trees were everywhere 
being blessed in the cause of liberty, but prices on the Bourse 
collapsed and, through fear of worse, every one sold what 
he could. What perhaps inspired most fear was the socialism 
which had been developing during the Monarchy with the 
growth of industry and the increase of the working population. 
The Republic which the insurgents had proclaimed was a social 
and democratic one, slightly tinged with red. With moderates, 
like Lamartine, there entered into the provisional government 
some advanced republicans, like Ledru-Rollin; a theoretical 
socialist, Louis Blanc; and a workman, Albert. According to 
a conviction that was almost general, this was only a beginning 
and France was on the way to a radical social reformation. 
The electoral reform had been the cause of the insurrection; 
universal suffrage was inevitable and at that time people 
could hardly imagine that such a thing could be anything but 
revolutionary. 

The very brief history of the Second Republic was that of an 
enthusiasm, swiftly disillusioned, and a prolonged fear. It was 


also that ef a much more important phenomenon; governmental 
393 


394 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


authority, under the form of the two monarchies which had 
abdicated in succession, had not been sure of the country and 
that is why at the first sign of trouble it had not been sure of 
itself and had failed. We shall now see France setting out to 
find authority somewhere and, in a very short time, reéstablish- 
ing it. Those who, through the fear of disorder, had distrusted 
the French people had been as much deceived as those who, for 
the sake of gaining votes, thought a demagogic attitude was the 
surest means of winning them. Even Paris, the hearth of revo- 
lutions, was very quick to show herself hostile to the social 
revolution and she spoke in no uncertain terms. 

The first weeks were tumultuous. The provisional govern- 
ment had constantly to parley with the insurgents who remained 
under arms and who demanded immediate satisfaction. It was 
necessary to promise them the “right to work,” in the name of 
which the national workshops were created to give occupation 
to the unemployed. Lamartine succeeded not without difficulty 
in keeping the tricolor instead of the red flag. However, the 
demands of the workmen were less serious than their illusions. 
As the moderates had told them that progress could not be 


realized in a day, they had shown their good will, in placing, ~ | 


“three months of poverty at the service of the Republic.” Three 
months to reform society! Universal suffrage had been pro- 
claimed ; entrance to the national guard, hitherto reserved to the 
middle classes, had been opened to all; the working day had 
been shortened; and a commission of social reforms had been 
created. This together with the creation of the national work- 
shops was about all that it had been possible to accomplish. 
But there were demands of another sort which were much 
more dangerous, those which were inspired by revolutionary 
idealism. Revenge for the treaty of 1815, the natural fron- 
tiers, and the hatred of the Holy Alliance had taken on a mystic 
character. The insurgents of 1830 were still thinking of con- 
quests, of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine. Those of 
1848 raised the banner of the oppressed peoples, especially of 
Poland, whose name was constantly appearing in their speeches. 
Revolutionary movements in diverse parts of Europe had pre- 





SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 395 


ceded the Days of February. Others, at Berlin and at Vienna, 
followed them. People believed that a new era of peace and 
justice and liberty was going to open for all the world. Paris 
was full of refugees from all countries, who went about in pro- 
cessions acclaimed by the crowd, asking the help of the pro- 
visional government. Every day Lamartine had to reply to 
delegations of Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Irish, and 
even Norwegians. Pressure was exerted on the Republic to 
win it over to the war of propaganda. The doctrinary republi- 
cans, with Ledru-Rollin, were strongly in favor of it. Lamar- 
tine, who had become minister of foreign affairs, abounded in 
noble words, temporized as best he could, enlightened by his 
responsibilities and fearing to throw France into adventures 
which would again weld the coalition against her. Me would 
perhaps have finally intervened in favor of Italy who had risen 
against Austria, if the Italians, remembering the French occu- 
pation at the time of the Revolution and of the Empire, had 
not feared the French republicans as much as the Hapsburgs 
and replied that Italy “would take care of herself.” The spirit 
of the European revolutions was above all national. They 
foreshadowed the formation of those great unities of Italy and 
of Germany which were to be accomplished only by breaking 
the framework of Europe and by provoking great wars. 

These consequences, of which Louis-Philippe and Guizot had 
had some misgivings when they were associated with Metternich 
in a policy of conservatism, escaped the French republicans. It 
is to the honor of Lamartine that he resisted their summons. 
But at the beginning of the Second Republic one anxiety domi- 
nated over the others. It was not sufficient merely to have pro- 
claimed universal suffrage; that suffrage had to be consulted. 
And in proportion as the hour approached, it was the revolu- 
tionaries who were most afraid of it. They began to ask them- 
selves if all of France were like Paris, whether it might not elect 
a moderate majority, even a reactionary one, and paralyze the 
Republic if it did not destroy it. It was the more advanced 
members of the revolutionists who then demanded an adjourn- 
ment of the elections and the “dictatorship of Progress.” In- 


396 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


timidated by the manifestation on the seventeenth of March, the 
provisional government deferred the balloting until April 
twenty-third. The partisans of the socialist Republic profited 
by this respite to organize a “day,” “journée,” on the model 
of the Revolution with the idea of purging the provisional goy- 
ernment and driving out Lamartine and the moderates. But 
just as in the time of the Revolution, when the Jacobins were 
beaten, it was through the legions of the national guard who 
had remained faithful to law and order, that the coup de force 
fell through. The Communists (for that was what people were 
beginning to call them) did not succeed in getting possession 
of the Hôtel de Ville and their manifestation met at Paris with 
only coldness and hostility. 

The people of the provinces were even more hostile. Eight 
days before the election, this menace of a riot disquieted and 
irritated them. Through force of habit, they had followed the 
capital and accepted the change of régime and there was not, 
so to speak, any candidate who did not call himself a republican. 
But a very remarkable symptom was the calm which was pre- 
served in the provinces, the almost complete absence of dis- 
order. 

Universal suffrage, this sphinx, this monster, was about to 
speak for the first time. People voted with a zeal that has 
never been seen since; 7,800,000 votes cast out of 9,400,000 in- 
scribed voters, 84 per cent of the eligibles. The response 
was decisive; out of eight hundred deputies, there were less 
than a hundred advanced republicans. The remainder were 
for the most part composed of moderates, together with some 
more or less avowed monarchists. This was a crushing blow 
for the social and democratic Republic. A still more serious 
result was that even on the Left almost all those elected were 
from the bourgeoisie. The conservatives, who were afraid of 
universal suffrage, had expected to see a great number of men 


in peasant blouses; there were not more than a score of work-  — 


men. The direction of the affairs of the country remained in 
the hands of the middle classes, and this has been the case in 
all the assemblies up to the present day. 





SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 397 


The Assembly of 1848 represented a general desire for order. 
The French people spontaneously followed the example of the 
bourgeois in 1830 who had substituted Louis-Philippe for 
Charles X. Although, like the July Monarchy, it had been born 
of revolt, the Second Republic immediately took its stand on 
the other side of the barricade. It was also like the July Mon- 
archy to find itself in combat with the deceived revolutionaries 
and by a rapid reaction was marching towards the reéstablish- 
ment of authority. 

The Assembly called itself “Constituent,” but with this dif- 
ference from that of 1789, that it was not friendly to the Left. 
While waiting for a constitution to be voted, it replaced the 
provisional government by an executive commission of five 
members, a sort of directorate from which the socialists were ex- 
cluded. Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin alone were admitted and 
with a number of votes less than that of their three new col- 
leagues, who were moderates. For the socialists thus elimi- 
nated from the government, it remained only to submit or to 
start a new revolt. This new Assembly opposed radical reforms 
within as well as foreign war without, for the liberation of 
nationalities. The Parisian democrats, excited by the clubs, 
tried to overturn it by a coup de force. On May fifteenth, the 
Assembly was invaded to the ery of “Vive la Pologne!” The 
insurgents took possession of the Hôtel de Ville. For a mo- 
ment it seemed as if the revolution had triumphed. But once 
more the national guard, which had remained in great part bour- 
geois, rapidly restored order. This attempt alarmed both the 
Assembly and the country and increased their hatred of so- 
cialism. From this time on, war was declared against it. The 
Right and the moderates united forces. Fifteen days later the 
majority decided to close the national workshops, which had 
become a source of waste and a center of agitation. People 
began to feel that the morrow was not certain, that a serious 
conflict was coming, and that they needed a strong govern- 
ment. 

These circumstances served the cause of Louis-Napoleon 
Bonaparte marvelously. However, there was no organized 


398 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Bonapartist party. Personally, the adventurer of Strassburg 
and of Boulogne had no credit. His name, the Napoleonic 
memories which were mingled with the ideas of order, author- 
ity, and glory, were in his favor. Perhaps the weakness of the 
government, which so disquieted the country, was also in his 
favor. Still an exile, he was elected deputy by a partial election. 
It was a decisive experiment; his name sufficed, it was a pledge 
and a guaranty. Louis-Napoleon thought it more politic not 
to reénter France immediately, although the Assembly had 
opened its doors to him, believing that it had not the right to 
oppose a wish expressed by universal suffrage. The latter was 
still too new not to be respected. 

This election came at a moment when the minds of the 
French were much agitated. The closing of the workshops was 
imminent. Every evening bands of workmen paraded the 
boulevards, acclaiming the democratic and social Republic. 
Counter manifestations were spontaneous and lacked only a 
motto and songs. One might say that the Empire began by a 
“saw” in a concert hall: “Poléon, we will have him!” and by 
sentimental ballads: “Napoleon, be a good republican!’ <A 
Bonapartist party began to form, and, what was still more im- | 
portant, a Bonapartist state of mind. A new socialist out- 
break was to reénforce it. 

This was more than a riot: a real attempt at social war, 
drowned in blood. The executive commission, in accordance 
with the vote of the Assembly, had fixed June twenty-first for 
the dissolution of the workshops. On. the twenty-second, the 
decision having been published, a delegation of workmen pre- 
sented itself before the government to protest. As the decision 
was, however, upheld, the insurrection broke out on the follow- 
ing day. 

It was all the more violent in that it was anonymous. The 
only name connected with it was that of Pujol, a leader of one 
of the sections of the national workshops, who gave the signal 
for the uprising in an harangue to the workmen in the Place 
de la Bastille, at the foot of the Column of July. This “sedi- 
tion,” as the Assembly called it, took its precedent for overturn- 





SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 399 


ing the bourgeois Republic, from the revolutions which had 
overturned the monarchy. By evening of the twenty-second, the 
working population of Paris was under arms. 

Paris then saw what she had not seen either in 1789 or 1830; 
a government resolved to defend itself, a government which had 
taken all precautions, which had even determined upon a plan 
in advance, and which assigned to the regular army the duty 
of repression. Setting aside the five civilians of the Executive 
Commission, the Assembly delegated control to General Cavaig- 
nac, that is, to a republican dictator. In three days the insur- 
rection which at first had controlled almost half of Paris was 
erushed. Wholesale arrests, condemnations by the courts- 
martial, deportations to Algeria, all followed this victory in the 
cause of order. The regular troops had fought with discipline; 
the bourgeois sections of the national guard, with fury. From 
the provinces, even, reénforcements had been sent to them. In- 
stead of being honored the insurrection was cursed. The in- 
surgents were no longer heroes but “‘barbarians.”” The assas- 
sination of General Bréa and the death of the Archbishop of 
Paris, Monseigneur Affre, killed at the moment when he was at- 
tempting to intervene between the combatants, were recounted 
with horror. Everywhere the impression was profound. From 
the moment that the revolution attacked the social order and 
property even Paris ceased to be revolutionary. Socialism 
emerged from those days of June, weakened and discouraged, 
while the reaction spread from the towns to the country with 
hatred for the “dividers-up.” 

From that time events marched rapidly. The constitution 
that was adopted by the Assembly read to the effect that the 
Republic should have a president and that this president should 
be elected by the people. There were very few republicans like 
Grévy who pretended that the plebiscite might be fatal for the 
Republic. Even the Left accepted it. Republican doctrine then 
held that the parliamentary régime was in its very essence con- 
servative and monarchic and that the executive power, in order 
not to depend upon an assembly which might at any time restore 
the monarchy, ought to depend upon universal suffrage. All of 


400 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


which goes to prove that political theories are as changing as 
the conditions which determine them. 

The plebiscite took place on the tenth of December. Louis- 
Napoleon offered his candidacy with that of Lamartine and 
General Cavaignac. He had entered France a short time be- 
fore; his presence in the Assembly had caused little comment 
and his attitude had been politic. Ie had denied that he pre- 
tended to the imperial throne. Instead of talking of social 
reforms as he had done in his first manifestoes, and as nearly all 
the world had been doing, a few months earlier, he had become 
conservative with a democratic vocabulary, a mixture of ideas 
such as was found in the Napoleonic traditions. To the general 
surprise, he was elected by a considerable majority, with five 
million and a half votes. More significant, more glorious than 
those of Cavaignac and Lamartine, his name had carried the 
day. 

Here was an extraordinary situation. This prince-president 
who was nothing the day before, who had only a handful of 
partisans, had become the head of the state. The first move- 
ment of the deputies was to consider his election as an accident 
(since the president could not be reélected) and to treat him 
as a negligible quantity. As a matter of fact, not having been 
initiated into affairs of state, he showed some embarrassment 
and even timidity. However, he already had a policy. He 
chose his ministers from among the conservatives, and, estimat- 
ing that Catholic opinion was important, he gave it satisfaction 
by deciding upon the expedition to Rome to reéstablish the Pope 
in his states from which a revolution had driven him. To the 
end Louis-Napoleon will be conservative without and liberal 
within and inversely, in order always to give satisfaction to 
these two tendencies of the French. 

However, his position was not secure. It was less so after 
the elections of the thirteenth of May, 1849, which showed that 
the president was isolated. A Bonaparte was at the head of 
the state and yet in France there were very few real Bona- 
partists. Moreover, the president would not have been able 
to have a program and candidates after his own heart without 





SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 401 


violating the Constitution and exposing his plans. The new 
Assembly elected as he himself had been, under the impression 
of the Days of June, was conservative. It was no longer even 
republican. Fear of disorder and of anarchy, the discontent 
of the country districts over the forty-five centimes added to 
the direct taxes, had all turned France away from the re- 
publicans. The party of order was victorious and it was 
represented by the legitimists and the Orleanists, the two groups 
which formed the majority. From one day to the next this 
majority could reéstablish the monarchy if the two groups of 
monarchists became reconciled in one royal family. They had 
been divided since 1830. If this “fusion” fell through, the 
prince-president would only have to take advantage of the cur- 
rent which was carrying France away from the Republic, and, 
instead of royalty, there would be an empire. It was thus that 
the affair turned out. Louis-Napoleon had only to profit by 
the faults of a royalist Assembly which did not know how to 
bring about a restoration. 

These faults were numerous and serious. Not only could 
the partisans of the Count of Chambord and those of the Count 
of Paris not succeed in coming to an agreement, which should 
have been easy since the elder branch of the Bourbons had no 
sons and would not have any, but they furthered the cause of 
the prince-president. What particularly preoccupied the minds 
of these conservatives, was the fear of the revolutionaries. In 
spite of their own large majority they were haunted by a fear 
of the “reds.” A partial election which returned a few deputies 
from the party which called itself the party of the Mountain, 
evoking memories of 1793, deputies elected mostly from Paris, 
alarmed the Assembly. It blamed universal suffrage for this. 
Thiers, having become a reactionary, in one of his numerous 
avatars, spoke of the “vile multitude.” After the passage of 
the law of May 31, 1850, which excluded three million electors, 
the policy of the president was clear; elected by the plebiscite, 
he would present himself as the defender and the restorer of 
universal suffrage. From this time on it was he who treated 
as a negligible quantity the inert Assembly, wavering between 


402 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


a monarchy and a republic while he was preparing for the Em- 
pire. Already he had chosen his ministers outside of it, he 
was building himself a party, was showing himself in France, 
and was flattering and conciliating the army which at the presi- 
dential election had cast fewer votes for him than for General 
Cavaignac. Already, with Persigny and Morny, he was pre- 
paring his coup d’état He had decided upon it when the 
Assembly had refused to revise the constitution, one article of 
which forbade the reélection of the president. The coup d’état 
of December 2, 1851, was a reactionary operation, but directed 
against a monarchist Assembly in order to deprive it of the 
benefits of reaction, executed with the aid of the army and 
preceded by advances to the democrats to whom the prince- 
president promised amnesty and the reëstablishment of uni- 
versal suffrage. 

The invectives with which the republicans have covered this 
coup d’état make us forget that the Assembly, which was driven 
out by force and whose members were for the most part ar- 
rested, was a monarchist assembly. If France had not had 
Napoleon III, she would have had a Henry V or a Louis- 
Philippe II. To read Les Châtiments of Victor Hugo and 
L'histoire d’un crime, one would think that the prince-president 
had strangled the Republic. In truth, he was strangling a 
monarchy in the cradle. Only, this monarchy would have been 
representative whereas the coup d’état established a dictator- 
ship and suppressed the parliamentary régime. In these con- 
ditions, at bottom very little different from those of the 18th 
Brumaire, the nephew of the First Consul substituted himself 
for royalty whose return was only a little more probable in 
1851 than in 1799. But what did France want? She wanted 
what the Assembly had not been able to establish on a solid 
basis—authority and order. The French people received them 
from Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. The coup d’état of Decem- 
ber second, organized from within, executed in the most favor- 
able circumstances, thus encountered only a feeble resistance, 
that of the republican minority of the country. This minority 
was still more weakened by the bitterness of the workmen who, 


SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 403 


remembering the Days of June, defended very half-heartedly 
a Republic which no longer existed except in name. The deputy 
Baudin sacrificed his life in vain on the barricade in the fau- 
bourg Saint-Antoine. The tentative insurrection which took 
place at Paris was stopped in three days. As time went on the 
measures taken against street fighting became better or- 
ganized and more severe. The government was no longer meek 
nor hesitating as it had been in 1789 and 1848. During the 
Days of June, General Cavaignac had already perfected what 
one might call the technique of repression. This time every 
one found carrying arms was shot. By the fifth of December 
Paris had become calm again. In the provinces there were only 
a few local uprisings which the troops had no difficulty in 
putting down. All of France had accepted the coup d'état. 
On December twenty-first, universal suffrage, reéstablished as 
the president had promised, was called upon to pronounce it- 
self. By 7,000,000 yeas against 600,000 nays, it approved 
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte for having violated and abolished 
the Constitution and conferred upon him a six-year term of 
office. The Empire was in reality accomplished. 

“For half a century France has had the administrative in- 
stitutions of the Year VIII,” said a proclamation of the prince. 
“Why should she not also have its political institutions?” In 
fact, there was little change needed to return to a consular 
dictatorship. It sufficed to limit the powers of the Chamber, 
which was again called the corps législatif, and to deprive it 
of all right of initiative. The improvement was the election 
of deputies by universal and direct suffrage. But those candi- 
dates who would be agreeable to the government were officially 
designated to the voters and practically all of the seats were 
assured to candidates thus designated. If the parliamentary 
régime as well as the dictatorship superimposed itself upon the 
institutions of the Year VIII, it was to the dictatorship that 
the French now returned. A year later, after a swift prepara- 
tion and a trip through France where he had been received as 
a sovereign, Louis-Napoleon announced his intention of re- 
establishing the hereditary Empire and of taking the name of 


404 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Napoleon III. On November 22, 1852, a new plebiscite ap- | 
proved it by a still larger majority than in the preceding year. . 


The French people adopted the Empire by 7,880,000 yeas 


against 250,000 nays. The opposition no longer counted. The . 
advanced republicans were in exile. Those who remained, . 
frightened by the rigorous measures and the deportations which * 
had followed the second of December, were reduced to silence. © 
Victor Hugo, who had taken refuge in Guernsey, wrote Les 
Châtiments but found himself left alone “to defy Scylla.” At. 
the elections of 1857, only a handful of the opposition, the Five, — 
were returned to the Legislative Corps. The firmness of. 
the administration, the action of the prefects, and intimidation | 
all contributed in part to this docility of the electoral body. : 


However, the acquiescence of the rural masses and of the bour- 


geoisie to this dictatorial régime was spontaneous. Napoleon : 


IIT had reason, then, to trust himself to universal suffrage. It 


remained only to give the country material and moral satis- 
faction; in other words, to govern. From the time of his elec- . 
tion to the presidency of the Republic until the reéstablish- — 
ment of the Empire, the thing which together with the glory . 


of his name had best served Napoleon III, was the idea of © 


authority and order. What might have hurt him was the idea 
of war associated with the Napoleonic name. But, during the 
Second Republic, the Assemblies, which had been either mod- 
erate or conservative, had followed a policy in European affairs 
very similar to that of Louis-Philippe. The program of the 
liberals and of the Bonapartists of the Restoration as well as 
that of the insurgents of 1830 and 1848, which included the 
abolition of the treaty of 1815, the establishment of the natural 
frontiers, and the liberation of the oppressed nationalities, had 
been allowed to lie dormant by Lamartine and his successors. 
Under the presidency of Louis-Napoleon there had been no 
other foreign expedition than the one to Rome for the protection 
of the Pope. This had satisfied the Catholics without necessi- 
tating a serious military effort. However, it might have been 
feared that, having become emperor, the prince-president might 
adopt a warlike policy. But he had reassured both France 


NN ee 


SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 405 


and Europe when in his speech at Bordeaux sometime before 
the proclamation of the Empire, he pronounced those famous 
words, so often recalled since: “The Empire means. peace.” 

This was not the only reason that Napoleon III was accepted 
by the four powers who in 1814 and 1815 had launched against 
the Bonapartes a decree of external exclusion. The revolutions 
which had overrun Europe in 1848, like an epidemic, had vio- 
lently shaken the Prussian and Austrian monarchies and they 
were not sorry to have order established in France even through 
a Napoleonic coup d'état. Moreover, Prussia and Austria had 
just emerged from a conflict for domination in Germany. With- 
out any blood having been shed, the Prussian royalty had been 
humiliated at Olmiitz and as a result there remained between 
the two German powers a rivalry which prevented any concerted 
action against France. As for England, Napoleon III knew 
that all depended upon her. He had taken every pains to 
reassure the old enemy of his uncle, and during his reign he 
always attempted to maintain the entente cordiale. There re- 
mained the Czar who was very hostile to the reéstablishment 
of the French Empire. Alone he could do nothing. But Rus- 
sia, whom the revolutions had not touched and who had, for 
the sake of Austria, even crushed a Hungarian insurrection, 
exercised considerable influence in Europe. . It would be neces- 
sary to humble Russia if the treaty of 1815 was to be revised to 
the advantage of France. And this was one of the cherished 
things which the new emperor had in mind as one of his main 
purposes. 

As heir to the Napoleonic traditions, and elected by the 
plebiscite, Napoleon III knew that his task was to satisfy all 
of the tendencies of the French people. The Empire, as Thiers 
said, “was a monarchy on its knees before democracy.” What 
had given the government to Napoleon III was the aspiration 
for order and authority. But the republican spirit of 1848 
would come to life and the longing for liberty would return in 
proportion as the memory of revolutionary danger faded. How 
could the autocratic Empire give satisfaction to the republican 
idea? By according to it what the July Monarchy and the 


406 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


conservative Republic had prudently denied it: a return to the 
Revolution’s foreign policy, the retaking of the natural fron- 
tiers and the liberation of the oppressed peoples. Reaction 
within, liberalism without; the Second Empire was to succeed 
in this policy for ten years or so up to the moment when diffi- 
culties were to arise for France out of the changes which she 
was to bring about in Europe. 

Like Napoleon I, Napoleon III gave to his reign a character 
both monarchie and democratic, conservative and liberal. Not 
having found a princess of royal blood, he married Eugénie de 
Montijo thus recalling the memory of the Empress Josephine. 
The speech in which he officially announced his marriage was 
a sort of manifesto. He had not tried at any cost “‘to introduce 
himself into the family of kings.” But he would be able to 
make himself respected by the “old Europe” by frankly taking 
“the position of a parvenu, a glorious title when one attained 
it through the free suffrage of a great people.” 

This old Europe Napoleon JII was dreaming of revising. 
The return to the Napoleonic régime would only be complete, 
would only win the support of liberal opinion and escape the 
reproach from which the Bourbons and Louis-Philippe had 
never been delivered, when the work of the Congress of Vienna 
was undone. On the other hand, experience had shown that if 
France openly ran counter to the Allies of 1814, they would be 
likely to unite against her again. It was therefore necessary, 
in order to change the course of European affairs, to do it in 
such a way as to prevent a coalition. And as the head of the 
coalition would again be England, it was with England that it 
was important to keep on good terms. The Eastern question 
which had existed for a century and was always useful either 
as a diversion or a source of complications, offered to Napoleon 
III the occasion for which he was looking. Charles X had 
thought of wiping out the consequences of Waterloo by an 
alliance with the Czar on condition of giving the latter a free 
hand in Turkey. This was virtually the renewal of the agree- 
ment at Tilsit. Napoleon III overturned it. In 1854 he allied 
himself with England to defend the integrity of the Ottoman 





SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 407 


Empire against Russia. From every point of view this war 
was good politics. It assured Napoleon III the alliance of 
England. It was favored in France by the Catholics because 
it had as pretext the protection of the Holy Places claimed by 
the Russian schismatics; and by the republicans because they 
hated this autocratic Czar, the “tyrant of the North” and the 
persecutor of Poland. Then, when finally the Russian power 
should be conquered, the field would be clear for France to 
intervene in favor of the oppressed nations. 

The Crimean war was not to bring more than this to France. 
After a siege of a year in which the French army had played 
the greatest part, Sebastopol fell and Russia confessed herself 
conquered, At the Congress which was held at Paris in 1856 
France appeared as the first power of the continent. Napoleon 
III seemed to have effaced both the reverses of Napoleon I 
and the failure of France in this same Orient in 1840. Russia 
was driven back far from Constantinople. She was humiliated 
and weakened; from this humiliation she retained a hatred for 
France. However, England would not permit the questions 
which most interested Napoleon III, those of Poland and of 
Italy, to be even touched upon. Satisfied with the weakening 
of Russia, England had already detached herself from France. 
Thus behind the appearances of glory and grandeur, there were 
hidden some bitter realities. In Prussia a formidable man was 
beginning his career and he had immediately seen the advantage 
that his country ought to derive from this new situation. This 
man was Bismarck. Prussia was the power most interested in 
a revision of Europe, because, without the suppression of the: 
order of things created in 1815, she could not expel Austria 
from the Confederation and thus build up German unity to 
her own advantage. Russia had just been humiliated at 
Sebastopol as Prussia had been at Olmiitz. Austria, ‘“aston- 
ishing all the world by her ingratitude,’ had abandoned the 
Czar who had saved her from the Hungarian revolution. Prus- 
sia by approaching the sorely wounded Russia was preparing 
the means of freely dominating Germany. 

In order to succeed, Bismarck’s farseeing plan, which was 


408 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


really a long chance, supposed that Napoleon III would reject 
the alliance which Austria offered him at the Congress of Paris. 
Napoleon IIT did not, in fact, want anything to do with this 
alliance which Louis-Philippe and Guizot had found useful in 
preventing dangerous upheavals; he could not desire it because 
it would have hindered him in liberating the Italian people. 
As early as 1855, when he parted with his minister of foreign 
affairs, Drouyn de Lhuys, a partisan of the understanding with 
Austria, Napoleon III had made up his mind. When, three 
years later, Orsini had thrown his bomb, this attempt on his 
life did not decide the emperor, as many have thought, to 
intervene in favor of Italian unity. It only served to convince 
those in his entourage who were opposed to war against Austria, 
that it was imprudent to resist the demands of the “Italian 
patriots.” Soon after, at the interview at Plombiéres, the sup- 
port of France was promised to Piedmont in the liberation of 
the Italian provinces from Austria and a year later, in 1859, 
hostilities began. 

After having fought the autocratic Czar, the Emperor of 
the French turned against the Hapsburgs. In this way he 
fulfilled another item of the liberal and republican program, and 
disarmed the opposition. On his departure for the army of 
Italy, he was acclaimed in the very faubourg where the barri- 
cades had been raised on December second. He was, however, 
running into difficulties of which he had no suspicion. Al- 
though the Austrian army had been defeated, not without diffi- 
eulty, at Magenta and Solferino, Napoleon IIT had the sur- 
prise of finding all Germany, which had been insidiously incited 
by Prussia, making common cause with Austria, a Germanic 
power. Threatened with war on the Rhine while the Austrians, 
driven only from Lombardy, were still resisting, and Russia 
and England were standing aloof rejoicing in his embarrass- 
ment, Napoleon III hastened to sign the armistice of Villa- 
franca. In so doing he abandoned Victor Emmanuel, and the 
Piedmontese, the Italian patriots who at that moment were 
hoping to win their freedom and effect the unification of a 
divided Italy. National revolution broke out in the principali- 





SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 409 


ties, menacing Rome and the Holy See. Thus the war against 
Austria for the liberation of the Italian nation took a sudden 
turn for the worse. It exposed France to a European conflict. 
It disappointed Italy herself, who resented being abandoned 
before the unity had been achieved and who considered that 
France was well paid for what services she had rendered, by 
the cession of Nice and Savoy. And finally, the question of 
Italian unity brought forward the question of the status of 
Rome and introduced a conflict between the foreign and do- 
mestic policy of Napoleon III. If he refused Rome to this 
new Italy he would be violating the principle of free nationali- 
ties and would alienate the French liberals. If he abandoned 
Rome, he would raise the opposition of the French Catholics 
who, ever since the coup d’état, had always lent him their 
support. 

Nor were these the only consequences which were to follow 
the ephemeral success of this policy of the liberation of na- 
tionalities. The Italian stumblingblock which Metternich had 
predicted first obliged Napoleon III to transform his system 
of government. Within he wished to appease the liberals and 
inaugurated the “liberal Empire” through the reform of 1860 
which increased the powers of the Legislative Corps, gave it 
a voice in the government again, and paved the way for another 
parliamentary régime. To the conservatives he promised peace, 
an end to interventions in Europe for the sake of principle, 
and the maintenance of the sovereignty of the Pope. But, even 
so, he had not succeeded in “uniting the parties beneath a 
cloak of glory.” He had not been able to satisfy both “the 
reactionaries and the revolutionists.” He had offended both 
camps while he flattered himself that he could solve the diffi- 
culties to which the preceding régimes had succumbed. By 
again adopting the policy of the revolution, he stirred up the 
dangers without, by which France was so soon to be again 
assailed. 

The last ten years of the Second Empire were consumed 
in the vain attempt to reéstablish a situation that had been 
compromised. Ever since the Congress of Paris, Napoleon ITTSs 


410 HISTORY OF. FRANCE 


a 


hope of revising the treaty of 1815 had been fading. He de- 
clared, indeed, that the treaty had ceased to exist but this was 
true only in the sense that Prussia was attempting to suppress 
those parts of it which were inconvenient for her, which bound 
her and prevented her from unifying Germany. Because of 
the annexation of Nice and Savoy England suspected that 
France, under Napoleon, was preparing for further conquests. 
On the other hand, the principle of the rights of nationality to 
which the emperor had remained faithful, and which he could 
not have abandoned without arousing the liberals, involved him 
in new embarrassments besides those which he had already en- 
countered in Italy. In 1863, Poland revolted against the Rus- 
sian domination and Napoleon III attempted to intervene. He 
only succeeded in arousing the resentment of Alexander IT with 
whom Bismarck made haste to ally himself in order to preserve 
the Prussian Polish provinces and at the same time to win the 
Czar over to his designs upon Germany. Suddenly, in the 
following year, the German question was brought to a head by 
the affair of Schleswig Holstein. This time Napoleon III re- 
fused the English proposition to intervene in favor of Denmark 
which had been attacked by Prussia and Austria. The em- 
peror objected that as the defender of the nationalities in Italy 
he could not take another attitude in Germany, the duchies 
being claimed by the Germanic Confederation. The result was 
only to deliver the Danes of Schleswig over to Germany. This 
conquest was Bismarck’s point of departure for the unification 
of Germany, the pretext for the conflict which he needed in 
order to expel Austria from the Confederation. His plan was 
evident. It could not escape those who were following the 
course of events. Napoleon favored it. Always looking for 
some success which should consolidate his throne, he returned 
to the system of the revolutionary epoch, that of compensations. 
He would leave Prussia a free field in Germany if in exchange 
France received certain territorial benefits. At the interview 
at Biarritz in 1865 with the envoy of William, the agreement 
was made on this basis but without any formal engagement on 
the part of Prussia. At the same time, to complete the chain, 





SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 411 


Bismarck allied himself with Victor Emmanuel and promised 
him Venice in case of a common war against Austria. This 
combination, so dangerous for France since it allied the ques- 
tion of Italian unity with that of German, Napoleon III ap- 
proved because he hoped that Venice would make the Italians 
forget Rome. When he finally perceived the danger it was 
too late, because he could no longer oppose the expansion of 
Prussia and support Austria without abjuring and destroying 
his work in Italy. 

And this was not all. When war broke out in 1866 between 
Prussia and Austria, supported by the German states of the 
south, Napoleon III was entangled in an adventure in America. 
In 1864, having in concert with England and Spain sent a 
few ships and troops to Mexico to support the claim of the 
creditors of that country, which had been devastated by revo- 
lution, the emperor had been seduced by the idea of founding 
a monarchy there, the sovereign of which was to be a Haps- 
burg, the Archduke Maximilian, brother of Francis Joseph. 
The most dangerous of the Napoleonic conceptions centered 
about one idea; that of obtaining a foreign success which should 
fire the imagination of the French. It was always a question 
of satisfying a fraction of public opinion. After the Syrian 
expedition to protect the Christians, the Mexican expedition 
would, he thought, perhaps turn the thoughts of the French 
Catholics away from Rome. The Emperor of Austria, whose 
brother would receive a crown from the hands of France, might 
perhaps be disposed to cede Venice without a struggle. But 
Mexico swallowed up men and money. In 1866, France had 
weakened her army without result and soon Maximilian, aban- 
doned by her, was shot by the Mexicans who had never recog- 
nized him. 

This, however, was not the reason which hindered Napoleon 
III from intervening in Germany, when like a “thunderbolt” 
came the news that the Austrian army had been defeated by 
the Prussians at Sadova. As a matter of fact, his hands were 
tied; he had been allied with Prussia since the interview at 
Biarritz, and by his entire policy he was allied with Italy who, 


412 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


at this very moment, had been defeated by the Austrians while 
trying to liberate Venice. If France interfered with the suc- 
cess of the Prussian army, she would be taking the side of 
Austria against Italy and would be supporting the state of 
things created in Germany by the treaty of 1815. The emperor 
thus would be cut out of the compensation which he had been 
hoping for. Furthermore the public which had applauded the 
Crimean war against the Czar, and the Italian war against 
the Hapsburgs, was rejoicing over the Prussian victory at 
Sadova as over a victory for liberalism, and would not have 
understood such a volte-face of the imperial government. 

However, public opinion was not long in perceiving its error. 
When the people saw that Prussia was increasing her power 
in Germany, was annexing Hanover, was preparing military 
conventions with the South German states whom France had 
protected and who were now delivering themselves over to their 
conquerors, and when they saw that Bismarck at the treaty of 
Prague was conciliating Austria in order not to make her irre- 
concilable, they finally understood what was happening. Too 
late is a serious phrase, a terrible phrase in history. When 
Thiers, forgetting that in order to combat Louis-Philippe and 
Guizot he had recommended the policy which Napoleon had fol- 
lowed, showed the danger of a great Germany unified by Prus- 
sia, and when he launched his oft-repeated saying, “There is not 
one fault left for you to commit,” the warning came too late. 
The press and public opinion now turned against the victors of 
Sadova, and forgot the favor which the Hohenzollerns, ever 
since Frederic IT, had enjoyed among the French. This tardy 
revelation of the true state of affairs showed itself in a general 
nervousness which only hastened the conflict for which Bis- 
marck was preparing. For the last ten years affairs had turned 
out well for him alone. At every move that France had made 
in Europe he modeled his policy accordingly and profited at 
once by all the faults which she committed. One might com- 
pare Napoleon III to a man walking with his eyes blindfolded 
while his enemy could see clearly. 

From 1866, and the battle of Sadova, date the decline of 





SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 413 


the Empire and the beginning of a new situation in Europe. 
In working to take revenge for Waterloo, through the destruc- 
tion of the treaty of 1815 and through the principle of free 
nationalities, France had had from the Congress of Paris until 
the battle of Solferino a few years of illusion. Jn the end she 
had compromised her security and provoked danger. The 
appearance of an enlarged and fortified Prussia, who no longer 
had Austria as a counterpoise and who henceforward would 
dominate the German countries, was a considerable change. 
All the Napoleonic policy was thus overturned. When the 
emperor remembered the promises of Biarritz and demanded 
for France some compensation out of Prussia’s conquests, Bis- 
marck made fun of this “innkeeper’s bill.” Napoleon III had 
demanded Mainz. Not only did Bismarck refuse it but he put 
the German princes on guard against the ambitions of France. 
Pushed back from the left bank of the Rhine, Napoleon III, 
falling into the error which Louis-Philippe had been so careful 
to avoid, thought of annexing Belgium. Later Bismarck re- 
vealed the whole affair to the Belgians and to the English, thus 
surrounding France with an atmosphere of suspicion so that 
she might be left alone on the day when he should decide to 
attack her. Finally, when Napoleon showed himself disposed 
to be content with Luxembourg, there arose in the parliament 
of North Germany a furious protestation against France, a 
manifestation of national hate. Bismarck replied that the will 
of the people prevented him from giving up a German terri- 
tory. 

Disappointed and humiliated, Napoleon III felt within 
France the result of his failures. The time had passed when 
there were only five irreconcilable opponents in the Legislative 
Corps. At the elections of 1863, thirty-five were returned. 
Paris and the large towns voted for the candidates of the oppo- 
sition. At the elections of 1867 it was still worse; the govern- 
mental candidates obtained in all France only a million votes 
more than the others. The saying of Henri Rochefort in the 
first number of his pamphlet, La Lanterne, was not without 
point: “Trance contains 36,000,000 subjects without count- 


414 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


ing the subjects of discontent.” The people were discontented 
over Mexico and Sadova. The Empire, after having promised — 
that there should be peace, had made war, and the war had 
disappointed the liberals who desired it, since Poland had not. 
been liberated and since Italy, although she had finally received 
Venice in 1866, still did not have Rome. The great mass of — 
electors who wanted peace were anxious because there was » 
beginning to be talk of increasing the French military forces 
in order to be ready to defend the country against Prussia. | 
The principle of free nationalities, which had brought only — 
vexations, no longer exercised the same attraction as formerly. 
A new school of republicans and socialists had arisen, and this, « 
instead of being warlike, demanded the abolition of permanent 
armies. The military reform of Marshal Niel, moderately « 
sustained by the government which was afraid of public opinion, 
was combated by the Left and came to nothing. Furthermore, 
the unhappy memories of 1848 and of the Days of June had 
become dim. The people were no longer grateful to Napoleon 
IIT for having reéstablished authority and order. Thus the ~ 
last years of the Empire passed amid anxiety and trouble. 

To overturn it, however, a catastrophe was needed. There » 
were many revolutionaries but no one thought of a revolution. 
In proportion as the Empire became weaker, it became more 
liberal, and the former opposition became reconciled with the 
government. Only the young men like Gambetta still remained 
intractable. Emile Ollivier, who had been one of the Five, 
had already become reconciled with the emperor. On January — 
2, 1870, he was put in charge of the ministry, which contained — 
eight deputies. The parliamentary régime, which had been . 
abolished in 1852, had been reconstituted little by little. Again — 
the emperor had these reforms and his power ratified by a | 
plebiscite. We can therefore see, four months before the fall, — 
how conservative was the majority of the French nation, how it 
respected the established order of things, and how little desirous — 
it was of change. On the eighth of May, 1870, there were again | 
more than 7,000,000 yeas against 1,500,000 nays. The coun- : 
try believed, Gambetta himself believed, “the Empire stronger — 


SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 415 


than ever.” The burial of Victor Noir, killed in the course 
of an altercation by the prince, Pierre Bonaparte, gave place 
to some manifestations which seemed formidable but which 
were without consequences. A few insurrectional movements 
of no importance served the government and it was even ac- 
cused of having provoked them. Better still, the Ollivier min- 
istry prosecuted some of the republicans for a plot against the 
security of the state, imprisoned Rochefort, and condemned the 
International Association of Workers. This was in the month 
of June. But for the disaster which was approaching no one 
knows how long the Empire might still have endured. 

A serious external difficulty had already arisen and was lead- 
ing France back to a situation which was not new in her his- 
tory. It is not astonishing that she should have entered into 
conflict with Prussia by way of Spain when we remember the 
place which Spanish affairs had held in French politics for 
centuries past. In 1868, a revolution had dethroned Queen 
Isabella and to replace her Marshal Prim in concert with Bis- 
marck had offered the throne to a Catholic Hohenzollern, Prince 
Leopold. France could no more allow a relative of the King 
of Prussia to reign in Spain than she could have allowed a 
Hapsburg under Louis XIV. What had been said in 1700 
was now heard again; the Empire of Charles V must not be 
reconstituted. Public opinion, which was already rising against 
Prussia, saw in this Hohenzollern candidature a provocation 
by Bismarck. Prévost-Paradol had written that France and 
Prussia were marching towards each other like two locomotives 
on the same track. One day or another the clash was sure to 
come. All that was needed for Bismarck to be sure that he 
had all Germany with him was that the war which he desired 
should be declared. He desired this war because it was neces- 
sary in order to consolidate German unity. He was holding 
himself ready to seize the opportunity and the Spanish affair 
offered it to him. 

The Prussian government had pretended that it knew noth- 
ing of the offer of the Spanish crown to a Hohenzollern. It 
was the father of Prince Leopold who, in the face of the 


416 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


French protestation, declined the candidature for his son. At — 


Paris this renunciation, with which Bismarck and William ~ 


refused to have anything to do, seemed insufficient and am- © 
biguous. Four years earlier Leopold’s own brother, Prince « 
Charles, chosen as sovereign by Roumania, had paid no atten- — 


tion to the prohibition of a European conference and had be- . 


taken himself in disguise to Bucharest. Once there, he took « 


advantage of an accomplished fact. The King of Prussia de- 


clared that his relative had acted without his knowledge, when — 


in reality Bismarck had approved of the whole affair. The 


French government knew this story all the better in that it — 


had been favorable to Prince Charles at the time. This is why 


in July, 1870, the minister of foreign affairs, Gramont, thought — 


it indispensable to assure himself that France would not be 


tricked in Spain as Europe had been in Roumania. He ordered : 
the French ambassador, Benedetti, to obtain guaranties . 


from King William, who was then taking the waters at Ems. 
William I was as prudent and timid as his minister was bold. 


He contented himself with having Benedetti told that he con- | 
sidered the question as closed, and there was no reason to — 
accord to the French ambassador the desired audience. The . 


story of this refusal arranged by Bismarck in such a way as — 


to be offensive to France, produced in Paris the impression that 


Prussia was trying to provoke war. The Chamber and public | 
opinion were already in a state of irritation. The “Ems . 
dispatch” produced the effect which Bismarck had calculated. | 
At Paris the mob was clamoring for war and crying, “On to — 


Berlin!” The words uttered by Emile Ollivier still weigh . 
upon his memory: “This responsibility we accept with a light 
heart.” Bismarck also accepted it. He had his war. It was | 
declared against him as he desired it should be, on July 19, © 


1870. 
Very few of the French had understood what this war signi- 


fied or divined what it was going to be. They thought they \ 
had only Prussia to combat, after all a power of second rank, — 
and a few small German states, her allies who were not taken : 


seriously. As for Prussia herself, the French resented her 


1 
| 


[ 
1 
| 


| 
| 
| 


SECOND REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 417 


ingratitude even more than her ambition. In reality France 
was entering into conflict with the entire German people. No 
one even imagined what was going to burst upon her. She 
never dreamed of defeat and invasion. Although France had 
been invaded twice, in 1814-15, it was by a crushing coalition 
and after long years of victories. All the campaigns of the 
Second Empire had taken place beyond her borders. A Prus- 
sian victory seemed most improbable. We can understand the 
terrible shock which France received from the turn of events. 
Those who had not been observing the progress of German 
unity under the influence of the Prussian state, as well as those 
who looked upon the national movements as legitimate and 
peaceful, were totally unprepared for what happened. There 
were even those who declared that there would be no more 
wars, or that if there were still some between monarchies, there 
would never be any more between people and people. 

The first disappointment came because of the isolation of 
France. She had not one alliance. Russia through spite was 
allowing Prussia to do as she liked. England feared that after 
a victory France would annex the left bank of the Rhine and 
perhaps Belgium. Italy was only awaiting her defeat to achieve 
her own unification and to enter Rome. Austria would have 
been glad to take revenge for Sadova but she had no confidence 
in the French and knew the force of Prussia. All the faults 
of the policy of the liberation of nationalities then bore their 
fruit. Napoleon III had thought it wise to carry out this 
policy by stages. Although he had avoided the coalition of 
which Louis-Philippe was afraid, in the end he had only suc- 
ceeded in leaving France isolated and weakened in the face of 
a Germany organized and commanded by the Prussian 
monarchy. 

The defeat came with terrifying suddenness. The enemy, 
ready before France, had entered Lorraine and Alsace. On 
the sixth of August the French had lost the battles of Froesch- 
willer and of Forbach. Twelve days later the army of the 
Rhine was blockaded in Metz. Another army formed at 
Châlons, having been set in march as reénforcements, was an- 


418 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


ticipated and stopped by the Germans. It was immediately 
shut up in the little town of Sedan, with the emperor himself 
who accompanied it. There was nothing left but to surrender. 
On the second of September, Napoleon III and 100,000 men. 
were prisoners. 

On Sunday, September fourth, the news of the disaster 
reached Paris. At a single blow the Empire collapsed. In 
the Chamber, the republicans, Jules Favre and Gambetta 
were still hesitating, fearing the revolutionaries. They were 
trying to give the fall a regular and legal form, when, as in 
1848, the mob invaded the Palais Bourbon and imperiously 
demanded the Republic. The leaders of the Left followed the 
people to the Hôtel de Ville, where a government of national 
defense was proclaimed, while the empress regent was leaving 
the Tuileries in a carriage. 

No one even thought of defending the Napoleonic régime 
which the sovereign people four months earlier had again ap- 
proved by 7,358,000 votes. 


CHAPTER XXI 
THE THIRD REPUBLIC 


Derrerat and invasion had overturned Napoleon III as they 
had Napoleon I. But in 1870 the situation was much less 
simple than in 1814-15. The events of September fourth, to a 
certain extent, resembled rather those of 1830. This point, too 
little understood, should at once be made clear. 

The men who formed the government of the national defense, 
hastened to stop the rioting and to protect the government from 
it, just as the hberals had done after the Days of July. From 
the beginning, the break with the revolutionaries had been com- 
plete. But in this bourgeois directorate there were also two 
distinct tendencies. Some, like Jules Simon, Jules Favre, and 
Ernest Picard, were moderates and statesmen. Thiers, who still 
passed as an Orleanist, was already very close to them. All 
these understood that the war was lost and wished to liquidate 
it as soon as possible. The other group, at whose head stood 
Gambetta, was composed of ardent republicans who preserved 
the Jacobin traditions and wished war to the finish. The new 
government, exactly like that of Louis-Philippe, was destined 
to have one party of resistance and one of action. While it was 
subjected to revolutionary attacks, it was still divided on the 
question of peace. The Republic became stable and endured, 
because the insurrection was conquered and because the warlike 
party had the worst of it. Thiers, with his experience of poli- 
tics and history, clearly understood this situation and it is thus 
that he became the veritable founder of the new régime. 

The moderates had the illusion for a moment that as in 
1814-15 the enemy was fighting the Empire above all else, and 
that, this once overturned, peace could easily be made. They 


were soon to perceive that Prussia was making war on France 
419 


420 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


and not her government. On the fifteenth of September at 
Ferrières, Jules Favre met with Bismarck, who demanded 
Alsace. The hope which the moderates had entertained van- 4 
ished. The acceptable peace, the honorable transaction which” 
the French had flattered themselves they could obtain after 
the fall of the Napoleonic dynasty, was not possible. Gam-w 
betta and the partisans of war to the limit were fortified by 
this check, and the organization of resistance was begun. From 
this another consequence was to follow. On one side, Bis-— 
marck did not wish to treat with anything but a regular gov- © 
ernment and that of the national defense was not such an one. 
It would be necessary to hold elections before it could become 
legal. On the other hand, Gambetta feared the election which © 
might be both hostile to the Republic and favorable to peace. « 
It was therefore decided to defer them. | 

Three days after the interview at Ferriéres, the German 
army began the investment of Paris. Separated from the rest 
of France, full of illusions about the sortie en masse | 
by the revolutionaries, the great city was to be besieged for © 
four months. The majority of the government had remained 
shut up in the capital and had only one delegation outside, « 
established at Tours, and this persisted in calling for the 
immediate convocation of the electors. This disagreement © 
might end in a break. In order to prevent this and to directs 
resistance in the provinces, Gambetta left Paris in a balloon. 
Finding himself alone at Tours with a few colleagues without 
authority, he formed a veritable dictatorship and improvised — 
armies with the idea of repelling the invader as had been“ 
done in 1793. These efforts were in vain. Since France had” 
lost her regular troops the battle was too unequal. There | 
was nothing left to save, but honor, and this was done. We 
may add that the prolongation of the resistance, by obliging | 
the Germans to continue the campaign when they thought it 
finished, made them circumspect for a time because it gave 
them the idea that France was not a country which could be 
easily crushed. ) 

However, the hopes which the government of the national 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 491 


defense had conceived crumbled, one after the other. Thiers 
had been charged with a mission for soliciting the intervention 
of Europe. Everywhere he received rebuffs. No one then saw 
the danger of a great Germany, and, at bottom, no one was 
displeased at the reduction of France. Russia even profited by 
her disaster to undo what the Crimean war and the Congress 
of Paris had done. She discovered the possibility of resuming 
again in the Hast her policy against Turkey. Thiers came 
back from his tour of the European capitals, convinced that 
there was nothing left but to ask for an armistice. Moreover, 
along with this diplomatic check a serious event occurred. The 
army of Metz had capitulated on the twenty-seventh of October. 
Bazaine, who was commanding it, had thought that by keeping 
his 150,000 men, the last military force which remained to 
France, he would be the arbiter of the situation and would be 
able to negotiate peace in the name of the Empire. Bismarck, 
by a clever system of intrigue, encouraged him in this idea until 
at last without a stroke he obtained the surrender of the only 
French army which was still intact. In 1873 Bazine was con- 
demned for treason. 

In Paris, which was surrounded on all sides, the news of 
the surrender of Metz, the rumors of an armistice and the 
failure of a few sorties which had been attempted by the 
besieged people, all tended to shatter the morale and to em- 
bitter a population which was beginning to suffer from scarcity 
of food. The feverish temper favored the revolutionary agita- 
tion. Already several manifestations had taken place for the 
purpose of forcing immediate elections, both municipal and 
legislative. The word “Commune” was heard again. On the 
thirty-first of October a veritable insurrection broke out, headed 
by Blanqui, a veteran of the old riots. The government, a 
temporary prisoner in the Hétel de Ville, was released with 
difficulty. This was the forerunner of troubles that were to 
come. 

The winter of 1870-71 was severe, and this year remained 
long in the memory of the French as l’année terrible, the terrible 
year. The untrained armies of reénforcement, raised in haste 


422 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


to deliver Paris, were defeated one after the other. The army 
of the Loire, after a success at Coulmiers, had to fall back be. 
fore the German forces which the surrender of Metz had liber- 
ated, and was pursued as far as Le Mans. A sortie of the Pari- 
gian garrison, which had intended to effect a juncture with the 
armies in the provinces, was repulsed at Champigny. Turn 
by turn, Chanzy in the west, Faidherbe in the north, and 
Bourbaki in the east failed. The occupation of France by 
the enemy was extended and the siege of Paris became more 
rigorous. On the fifth of January the bombardment began. 
_ However, Gambetta did not wish to give up the struggle, and 
opposition to his dictatorship increased. The discord in the 
government which had appeared in the month of September was 
to become more intense. 

On the twenty-eighth of January, Paris having come to the 
end of her provisions and her resources, and two last sorties 
having failed at Buzenval, an armistice was signed at Versailles 
by Jules Favre and Bismarck. The elections had to take place 
at once in order that the Assembly should decide for peace or 
war. Ten days earlier, at Versailles in the Gallery of Mirrors, 
another great event had also taken place. January eighteenth, 
on the anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Prus- 
sia, William I had been proclaimed the German Emperor. 
German unity had been created to the profit of Prussia and 
the Hohenzollerns through France’s defeat, and it was accepted 
by all of Europe which did not then suspect what a menace a 
powerful Germany would later be to her. 

France herself had only a provisional government and it was 
not united. Gambetta, having come from Tours to Bordeaux, 
had disapproved of the armistice. When it had been signed in 
spite of him, he still wished that the suspension of hostilities 
should at least serve for preparing to resist to the point of 
“complete exhaustion.” A national republican assembly was 
therefore necessary, one that should be resolved to reject any 
mutilation of territory and, if peace could not be obtained 
otherwise, ‘capable even of desiring war.” Thiers, whose in- 
fluence was growing daily, opposed Gambetta whom he soon 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 423 


treated as a “wild man.” ‘The moderates disavowed their im- 
petuous colleague and the “dictator” handed in his resignation. 
The republican party was thus going to the elections divided 
against itself. Its Left wing, the most extreme, was committing 
the Republic to the idea of an unending war which the good 
sense of the country disapproved. The insurrection of the 
thirty-first of October and the agitation which persisted at 
Paris also showed that the revolutionary danger was bound up 
with the protests against the armistice. Finally, in the great 
disorder which the disaster had caused, universal suffrage, dis- 
appointed in the Empire, naturally turned to the men who 
represented order and peace, the conservative monarchists whom 
it had already sent to the Assemblies of the Second Republic. 
It was to them that the elections of February 8, 1871, again 
gave the majority. Out of six hundred and fifty deputies, the 
National Assembly counted four hundred legitimists and Or- 
leanists. The country thus found itself back to where it started 
in 1851 before the conservative Assembly had been dispersed 
by the coup d'état. 

For other reasons the Assembly of 1871 was to be no more 
successful in restoring the monarchy. Everything paralyzed it. 
The two branches of the house of Bourbon, separated by the 
memory of 1830, had not yet become reconciled. Moreover, the 
royalists, in order to remove from the monarchy the reproach 
which had pursued the Restoration of having been brought 
back in the caissons of the foreigner, thought it more politic 
to leave the responsibility of a peace which would mutilate 
French territory to a transitional régime. They also perceived 
certain signs which were forerunners of an insurrection, and 
did not wish to hamper the beginning of a reign with the 
necessity of repression. Instead of immediately restoring the 
monarchy as in 1814, they postponed it for a future date. By 
common consent, by the “agreement of Bordeaux,” the question 
of what form the future régime should have was temporarily 
laid on the table. The de facto government, which was re- 
publican, continued. And it was the Republic which signed 
the peace. It put an end to the Commune and reéstablished 


424 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


order. It assumed all the responsibilities and reaped all the 
profits. And it carried out the program on which the majority 
of the Right had been elected. Thus the fears which the Re- 
public had inspired—revolution, war without end—vanished. 
These combined causes were the reasons why the republican 
régime, at first provisional, became definitive. 

The personal prestige and action of Thiers did much to bring 
this about. In the course of his numerous metamorphoses, 
Thiers, under the Empire and through opposition to the Em- 
pire, had become converted to the traditional foreign policy. 
He had combated the principle of free nationalities and had 
foreseen the disastrous consequences. He had seen the war 
with Prussia approaching but had advised France to avoid it 
because she was not ready. The memory of these things gave 
him an unrivaled authority, especially with the middle classes 
whose opinion in France is always decisive. Restless, adven- 
turous, and blustering until a ripe age, Thiers, as an old man, 
seemed the incarnation of good sense. On the eighth of Febru- 
ary, he had been elected in twenty-six departments. If Thiers 
became republican the bourgeoisie would follow him, and he 
already was one although he was sufficiently politic not to raise 
the question of the form of government. In this latter respect 
the monarchist majority agreed with him, and named him 
chief of the executive power. Republican by doctrine, Jules 
Grévy was elected president of the Assembly. He had said in 
1848: “I do not wish the Republic to frighten people.” He 
also had combated Gambetta. The Assembly was pushing to 
the fore the men most capable of having the Republic accepted 
by a country which distrusted it. 

As the armistice was coming to an end it was necessary to 
negotiate immediately with Germany. Negotiate is not the 
correct word. There was nothing left but to submit to the 
conditions of the enemy. The elections had disarmed the ne- 
gotiators for France, because they had emphasized a great desire 
for peace. The Assembly had received the mandate to sign this 
peace. It was not even possible to profit by the resistance in 
which Gambetta had persisted, and to menace Bismarck with 


THE THIRD REPUBLIC 425 


a national uprising if his demands were excessive. Neither 
could France count upon another Congress of Vienna to break 
up the tête-à-tête of victor and vanquished. England, Russia, 
and Austria had indeed given Bismarck certain counsels of 
moderation, but the Congress of London, which had met to 
consider the affairs of the Orient, had not wished to trouble 
itself about the Franco-German peace. France remained iso- 
lated. The principle of liberated nationalities had given her 
neither alliances nor friends. She had to cede Alsace and a 
part of Lorraine, while an indemnity of five billion francs was 
imposed upon her with the condition that the German army 
would continue its occupation until the debt was paid. The 
preliminaries of peace were signed on February 26, 1871, and 
three days later were ratified by the Assembly. The deputies 
of the ceded provinces protested that the populations of Alsace 
and Lorraine regarded as void an agreement which disposed of 
them without their consent. Only 107 votes were cast against 
the ratification and these were the votes of the advanced re- 
publicans. The radical Extreme Left remained the party of 
war to the limit, and several of its members, to emphasize 
their opposition against the signing of peace, handed in their 
resignations. 

Among the conditions which Bismarck had imposed, there 
was one which was very serious, and it was the only one from 
which he himself reaped no benefit. He had demanded for the 
German troops a solemn entry into Paris. Nothing was better 
fitted to arouse the Parisians after the suffering and exhaustion 
of the siege and all the trouble which had overwhelmed the 
life of the great city. The revolutionary explosion which was 
then preparing was composed of many elements. Although the 
procession of the German troops was limited to the Champs 
Elysées and lasted only a few hours, the humiliation which the 
French endured is to be regarded as one of the causes of the 
Commune. Almost all the Paris deputies had voted against 
peace. Paris was for the Republic and for revolutionary war.’ 
Paris was hostile to this Assembly of “‘rurals’? whose conserva- 
tive and pacific sentiments were so different from her own. 


426 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


The traditions of 1793 and the memories of 1830 and 1848 
had not altogether disappeared. The rise of Delescluze, one 
of the leaders of the Commune, dated from the Days of July. 
The ‘patriotic’ revolution, strangely enough, associated itself 
with the socialist Internationale; the old Jacobin conception of 
the Commune merged with the ideas of a communal federalism, 
which were far removed from the Republic, one and indivisable. 
The common basis for this régime was the spirit of rioting in 
a population which had been armed for the siege and which 
had kept its arms because the government had neither the de- 
sire nor the force to take them away. 

The insurrection which had been seen coming began on 
March eighteenth, when the order was given to take away the 
cannon from the national guard. But another circumstance 
had arisen which gave to these events a curious resemblance to 
those of the Revolution. The Assembly, having met first at 
Bordeaux, had decided to sit not in the capital, where they were 
afraid of the agitation, but at Versailles as the States General 
had done in 1789. Even Bourges and Fontainebleau had been 
suggested. This mark of distrust was interpreted in Paris as 
the forerunner of a restoration or a coup d’état. A majority of 
the peaceable people had already left Paris, which was filled 
with a mass of idle and armed men to whom were to be added 
also European adventurers of all sorts. As for the regular 
troops, 1t was useless to count upon them to maintain order. 
They had almost ceased to exist and their morale was poor. 
Those who had been sent to Montmartre to take away the cannon 
fraternized with the crowd and abandoned General Lecomte, 
who was shot a few hours later with a former general of the 
national guard, Clément Thomas. Then the storm, which had 
been so long brewing, burst. After a few days of uncertainty 
and confusion, the insurrection took form through the creation 
of a communal government which broke with that of Versailles. 
It was no longer a riot. It was civil war, and more serious 
than that of the Days of June. 

The imagination has been singularly impressed by the Com- 
mune. It has left a profound horror. It was, however, the 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 427 


thing which consolidated the republican régime: first, as we 
have already said, because the Republic showed itself capable 
of establishing order; and, finally, because, from the first symp- 
toms of insurrection which had appeared simultaneously in 
some of the large towns, Thiers, had ceased his attempts to con- 
ciliate the Right, being convinced that the Republic was needed 
to calm the minds of the people. Such was the true meaning 
of his saying: “The Republic is the régime which divides us 
least.” 

In the meantime it was necessary to defeat the insurgents. 
Thiers, taking his inspiration from the lessons of history and 
from the experience of the European reaction of 1848, espe- 
cially from the method employed at Vienna by General Win- 
dischgraetz, had decided to deliver Paris over to the revolution- 
ists in order to shut them up there and crush them later. This 
plan succeeded because the insurrection proved abortive in the 
other large towns, and because France in general desired and 
supported the repression. This took two months, during which 
time Paris experienced a new Terror through the execution or 
massacre of hostages. The Archbishop of Paris was one of 
these. It was only the twenty-first of May, after a veritable 
siege, that the Versailles government entered the capital. Dur- 
ing another week, the bloody week, the Communists were 
driven back while they in turn started fires to stop the soldiers. 
They burned the Tuileries and the Hôtel de Ville, and it seemed 
as if the revolution would destroy Paris before it would sur- 
render. Fury raged in both camps. The rigor of this suppres- 
sion had never been equaled. There were summary executions, 
more than 40,000 arrests, and 17,000 killed. The councils of 
war pronounced condemnations up to 1875. A few leaders of 
the Commune were executed and others deported, among whom 
was Rochefort. Far from injuring the Republic, this severity 
consolidated it. It gave the impression of a government with 
a strong hand, of a government of authority which had reversed 
the rule of 1789, of 1830, and of 1848, and which would not 
permit Paris to impose a revolution on all France. 

This civil war went on under the eyes of, and in contact with, 


428 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the Germans, who in virtue of the armistice, were occupying 
the forts to the north and east of Paris. Bismarck had even 
offered to come to the aid of the French government, to suppress 
the insurrection. Thiers had refused this compromising offer. 
But peace was not yet signed and it was necessary to hasten 
the return of the prisoners in order to have enough soldiers to 
conquer Paris. If the Commune were prolonged, Bismarck 
might find a pretext in an anarchy which would menace the 
fruits of his victory, and he might become more demanding. 
As a matter of fact, he did profit by circumstances to aggravate 
the conditions of the preliminaries of peace. The treaty was 
signed at Frankfort on the tenth of May, immediately approved 
by the Assembly, and ratifications were exchanged between 
France and Germany on the twenty-first, the day on which 
the army of order entered Paris. The foreign and civil wars 
were ended at the same time. | 
Without doubt, there were many ruins to be rebuilt. There 
were the five billion francs of the treaty of Frankfort to be 
paid, and these were only a part of what the disaster had cost 
France. Her loss has been estimated at more than fifteen bil- 
lions. It remained to liberate the country which was to be oc- 
cupied until the payment of the indemnity. But the two prin- 
cipal tasks for which the Assembly had been elected were ac- 
complished. Order was reëstablished and peace concluded. The 
“head of the executive power,” which at the beginning was the 
noncommittal title given to Thiers, was entrusted with this duty. 
His personal credit had increased. The provincial régime which 
he represented ceased to terrify, because it took with him a con- 
servative aspect. Thiers had said that the Republic “would 
either not be or it would be conservative” and he asked that 
the people should make “a loyal trial” of it. Moreover, at 
this moment Gambetta began to side with Thiers and recog-* 
nized that the republican cause was lost if it did not free itself 
from its revolutionary and warlike traditions. Complementary 
elections had taken place on July 2, 1871. Gambetta, returning 
from Spain where he had taken refuge, offered himself as a 
candidate, and, in his profession of faith, announced that he 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 429 


had become converted to the wisdom of Thiers. His program 
became “at once conservative and radical.” The “opportunist” 
party was founded and the Republic with it. There were 111 
seats to fill A hundred republicans, almost all of them mod- 
erates, were elected. The current was now carrying the coun- 
try towards the Republic. 

This was the moment when the Right, still in the majority, 
was ready to restore the monarchy. The reconciliation, the 
“fusion” of the two branches of the house of Bourbon, was being 
realized. The grandson of Louis-Philippe withdrew in favor 
of the grandson of Charles X. It was not only a little late, 
but there was a misunderstanding between the Count of Cham- 
bord and the Assembly which wished to offer him the crown. 
Like Louis XVIII, the Count of Chambord intended to return 
on his own terms, without submitting to the conditions im- 
posed by the parliamentarians. The question of the white flag, 
which he immediately brought forward, was a symbol. 

For five years there was the strange situation of a royalist 
majority which was not in accord with the legitimate prince, 
the only one that it recognized. Failing to reéstablish the 
monarchy, this majority wished at least to prevent the Republic 
from becoming permanent. However, this Republic, “without 
republicans,”’ continued to exist and tended to become more and 
more liberal. It was swinging toward the Left, the propaganda 
of Gambetta was bearing fruit. At the partial elections, it was 
now the conservative republicans, the friends of Thiers, who 
were beaten by the radicals. The Right was melting from day 
to day. In 1873, a letter of the Count of Chambord, who per- 
sisted in his independent attitude, had again postponed the 
question of the régime. It began to look as though the As- 
sembly and Henry V would never come to an agreement. At 
this moment the Right, finding a leader in the Duke of Broglie, 
tried to hasten matters. In order to defend itself against the 
progress of radicalism, the conservative union, a coalition of 
the legitimists, the Orleanists, and the Bonapartists, decided 
to take over the government itself. It was two years too late. 

The operation was conducted by some skillful parliamen- 


430 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


tarians, one of them, Buffet, who had already been substituted » 
for Grévy, directed the debates of the Assembly and on the 
appointed day contributed powerfully to the fall of Thiers, May . 
24, 1873. All was ready and agreed upon. Thiers was re-« 
placed that very evening by Marshal MacMahon. Attached 
by his traditions to the legitimate monarchy, this loyal soldier, « 
having become president of the Republic, was against his will M 
to lay its foundations. | 
The Duke of Broglie was immediately chosen as the head © 
of the government. Although he was disposed to establish the 
monarchy, he foresaw the possible check and had arranged for « 
himself a line of retreat. The restoration was conscientiously . 
prepared for. The Count of Paris, the grandson of Louis- 4 
Philippe, came to Frohsdorf to seal with the Count of Cham- M 
bord the reconciliation of the two branches of the house of — 
France. The groups of the majority formed the Commission « 
of Nine which took the necessary measures for the Assembly « 
in virtue of its constituent power, to vote the return to royalty. — 
There was complete agreement among the members of the Right. — 
Success was in sight, and the various republican parties, be- 
coming alarmed, drew together and founded the union of the © 
Left. They were much troubled at the idea of having to resort — 
to insurrection against a legal restoration. There was in the “ 
Assembly a majority of at least twenty-six votes in favor of 
the monarchy. It lacked only the’ consent of the Count of 
Chambord. Would he persist in maintaining the white flag? 
He held aloof, a voluntary exile. The deputy Chesnelong sent « 
to negotiate with him, returned, convinced that the difficulty had 
been removed. The rumor spread that the grandson of Charles « 
X would accept the tricolor. The monarchy seemed to be ~ 
achieved, when in an astounding letter dated the twenty-seventh 
of October, the Count of Chambord laid down his unchangeable 
reasons: “I wish,” said he, “to remain entirely what I am. 
Restricted to-day, I should be powerless to-morrow.” He pre- 
ferred not to reign rather than to be “the legitimate king of . 
the Revolution,” and to keep intact the monarchic principle, 
rather than to compromise it by an ephemeral restoration. 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 431 


This letter which spread consternation among the royalists 
filled the Bonapartists and republicans with joy. We may also 
imagine that it was a relief to the liberal monarchists whose 
ideas it would have been difficult to reconcile with those of 
Henry V who was planning a complete political and social re- 
form for France for which the minds of the people were in no 
way prepared. In short, the parliamentary monarchy was im- 
possible. Then the combination was brought forward which 
the Duke of Broglie had been holding in reserve. In order to 
gain time, to guard against disorder among the conservatives, 
and to make sure of the future, his solution was to consolidate 
the powers of the marshal, prolong them, and render them in- 
dependent of the Assembly: to make the presidency of the 
Republic a sort of stepping-stone to the monarchy. It would 
then only be necessary, when the day came—that is to say, 
when the Count of Chambord had disappeared or abdicated— 
to put the king in place of Marshal MacMahon, a veritable 
lieutenant general of the realm. From this expedient was born 
the presidency of the Republic such as it still exists to-day. 
“Failing to create the monarchy, we must create what is most 
like it,” said the Count of Paris. It was voted that the powers 
of the president should run for seven years. If the Republic 
was only a régime of expediency, if it was not actually founded, 
it was very near to being so. 

It was only in the first months of 1875 that the Republic 
may actually be said to have been founded. It was soon ap- 
parent that the seven-year term was not sufficient in itself, that 
it was a “rampart of clay.” It was necessary to organize the 
publie powers, but these could not be organized without defining 
the political régime of France. There was an executive power ; 
there was also an Assembly whose monarchist majority had 
called itself Constituent. Its term of office was not to last 
forever, and it could not adjourn without having given to the 
country a constitution marked with its own stamp. To vote 
constitutional laws was inevitable. It was no less so in voting 
them, to choose between the monarchy and the Republic. The 
majority hesitated and struggled for a long time. The 


432 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


republicans hesitated no less to accept a parliamentary consti- 
tution elaborated by the conservatives and Orleanists. They 
had to accept not only a president, but a senate also, which 
would not be elected by universal suffrage. This was entirely 
against the democratic doctrine. Gambetta, then, always edging 
toward opportunism, and separating himself from the radicals, 
who held out for all or nothing, was taking the Left with him. 
Thinking that an intensely republican constitution would 
frighten the country and bring about a reaction, he persuaded 
the republicans to content themselves with what the monarchists 
and the moderates offered them. On January 30, 1875, by a 
majority of one vote, the Wallon amendment, which contained 
the name Republic and which inscribed it officially in the laws, 
was adopted. This amendment read that the president of the 
Republic was to be elected by the two chambers and was eligible 
for reélection. Thus the powers of the president, personal in 
their origin, became impersonal. Marshal MacMahon might 
have successors. The Republic had come via the seven-year 
term of the president. It has always borne the mark of the 
men who founded it, whose ideal system was that of the July 
Monarchy. But these men were soon to be driven out. 

This Republic, still provisional, since the revision of the 
constitutional laws was there provided for, this Republic, to a 
certain degree monarchical, was still a republic without re- 
publicans. It was understood that it was to be conservative. 
Thiers had already promised this, and when the majority took 


the power away from him, it was because they accused him of M 


not keeping his promise and of not resisting the current which 
was carrying universal suffrage toward the Left. In order 
that the Republic should become republican it only remained 
to expel the conservatives with the president they had elected. 
This is what happened in a few months, through a combina- 
tion of causes in which both foreign and domestic policy were 
involved. 

Thiers, who had directed everything for two years, had only 
one item in his foreign policy, namely peace. After having 
accomplished this, he had fulfilled its conditions. In the first 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 433 


place, it was necessary to deliver France from the German 
occupation. At any moment, and on the slightest pretext, Bis- 
marck might make new demands. France would not be tran- 
quil before the last German soldier had crossed the new fron- 
tier. To bring that about the five billions must be paid as soon 
as possible. The French like to meet their engagements. Noth- 
ing was refused to liberate the territory. Confidence in 
France’s recovery was so great, both within and without, that 
a loan for three billions was oversubscribed fourteen times. 
Thus it was possible to pay in advance. In the month of 
March, 1873, a Franco-German convention had fixed the last 
payment for the fifth of the following September. In this way 
the occupation would come to an end before the date prescribed 
by the treaty and this actually happened. But, in the interval, 
Thiers had fallen and his fall had caused discontent and anxiety 
at Berlin. Bismarck knew that in his later years he had become 
as pacific as he had been warlike in his youth and middle age. 
As a matter of fact, Thiers, who in 1866 had prophesied the 
dangers of German unity, now saw France defeated, weakened, 
isolated, and he thought it was best to come to terms with the 
powerful conqueror. He had hastened to rebuild a military 
force because he knew that France could not live without one, 
but nothing was further from his mind than the idea of revenge. 
Bismarck understood this. In his eyes, Thiers was the guaranty 
of the peace that he had signed. When Thiers had been put 
out of the government, the German chancellor showed that he 
feared both the government of the conservatives, capable of 
making monarchie and Catholic alliances in Europe, and the 
government of the ardent republicans, those who, with. Gam- 
betta, had desired war to the last ditch and who had voted 
against the treaty of Frankfort. Moreover, at no moment had 
Bismarck ceased to distrust France and Europe generally. It 
had immediately appeared that the new German Empire, 
founded by force, could count only upon force to maintain 
itself. It was to impose upon all its neighbors the principle of 
the armed nation and the armed peace, which was big with 
another war, more terrible than any that the world had ever 


434 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


known. This powerful Germany, formed through the errors « 
and the defeat of France and the benevolent neutrality of 
Europe, was preparing the somber future which farsighted men 
of the nineteenth century had predicted. 

In order to get possession more quickly of the balance of the — 
five billions, Bismarck had accepted the agreement of March « 
15, 1873. He had hardly evacuated the last French village 
before he regretted it. Several times already, during the presi- 
dency of Thiers, he had threatened to keep Belfort. Once paid, 


he found that France was recovering too quickly and it would à 


perhaps be better to “have broken her back.” However, the 
foreign policy of France after Thiers as well as under his — 
guidance, remained cautious. Duke Decazes, minister of 
foreign affairs in the Broglie cabinet, tried to avoid conflicts. 
Although the majority of the National Assembly was Catholic, 
the government refused to intervene in Italy in favor of the 
temporal power of the Pope. However, nothing could restrain 


Bismarck from taking an aggressive attitude and multiplying M 


provocations. In the month of May, 1875, alleging that the 
French military reorganization was directed against Germany, 


he announced his design of “settling it with France.” This — 


time, first Russia, and then England gave Berlin to understand ~ 
that they would not permit an aggression. The “old Europe | 
has waked up,” said Duke Decazes, who had been able to 
bring about these diplomatic interventions. It is none the less . 


true that France had been or had seemed to be within a hair’s « 


breadth of war at the time when the republican campaign was 
growing. It received from it redoubled impetus. Among the 
masses, particularly the rural masses, the accusations brought 
against the conservative government of endangering the peace 
produced an immense effect. The republican party, led by 
Gambetta, put aside its warlike traditions as Thiers, after 1871, 
had advised. It turned the accusation of being the war party 
against the conservatives. And yet, the warning of 1875 was 
to be followed by many others, from the Schneebelé affair up to 
1914. It will not be long before the country will begin to see 
that Germany’s ill will was directed against France herself and 








THE THIRD REPUBLIC 435 


not against her government; just as she had shown in 1870 that 
it was not the Empire that she was attacking. 

In any case, the conservatives found themselves in a poor 
position for retaining power. They had now founded the Re- 
public and the Republic must needs be republican. From that 
time on, it was a regular régime, and it profited by that respect 
for the established order of things which had formerly sus- 
tained the Empire. In trying to struggle against the current 
which was carrying the Republic towards the Left, the con- 
servatives ended by ruining their own cause before the electoral 
body because it was they who seemed to be seeking a revolution. 
They had believed in their provisional combination which con- 
templated a revision in 1880 at the end of the seven-year term. 
They perceived that for the great mass of the French they 
had created at their own expense something that was not to be 
provisional but permanent. 

The Assembly came to an end after the Senate entered 
upon its functions. The members of the latter body were then 
in part irremovable and named by the Assembly itself. The 
Senate thus had a conservative majority. But on February 
20, 1876, the legislative elections after an ardent campaign by 
Gambetta against clericalism and against the war, were a dis- 
aster for the Right. The president of the Council, Buffet, was 
himself defeated, and the Left now became preponderant in the 
new Chamber. Another year passed in which Marshal Mac- 
Mahon attempted to bar the way to Gambetta and to radicalism 
through moderate ministries. Finally, on May 16, 1877, avail- 
_ ing himself of the powers given him by the Constitution, the 
Marshal dismissed his prime minister, Jules Simon. It was a 
question of saving the “moral order,” of maintaining the spirit 
_ of the seven-year idea, and of giving the government back again 
_ to the conservatives. The Duke of Broglie was recalled to 
| power and the Chambers were adjourned. The union of the 
| parties of the Left from Thiers to the socialist, Louis Blane, 
was immediately formed, and its manifesto to the country was 
| signed by 363 deputies. A month later, after a stormy session 
in which the 863 defied the government, the marshal, again 


436 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


availing himself of his constitutional rights, pronounced a dis- 
solution of the Chamber with the assent of the Senate. 

From that day, dissolution of the Chamber has been consid- « 
ered a reactionary measure. Although inscribed in the consti- — 
tutional laws, no president has since had recourse to it. It has « 
taken the aspect of a coup d’état. The sixteenth of May, how- « 
ever, was only a legal coup d’état, parliamentary, a false coup 
d'état. It was, above all things, a mistake. The marshal and — 
the Duke of Broglie did not confront France with a fait ac- — 
complt. They appealed from electors to electors. They called | 
upon the people within eighteen months to admit that they had 1 
been wrong. The meastre was ill advised and foredoomed to M 
failure. The next thing in order was a union of the parties of 
the Right. Thereupon the union of the Left went them one © 
better. It was now the Left which became the party to speak — 
the language of conservatism. “They wish,” said Gambetta, “to M 
launch France, the country of peace, of order and frugality, into — 
dynastic and warlike adventures.” And these words found an M 
echo in the hearts of the rural people. As Jules Grévy had de — 
sired, the Republic was no longer terrifying, and since the Com- © 
mune, the revolution had been bled white. It was therefore — 
the parties of the Right which were accused of compromising the « 
peace of the country. The rôles were exactly reversed. At the 
elections of October 14, 1877, all the efforts of the marshal, of © 
the Duke of Broglie and of Fourtou, the minister of the in- — 
terior, could not succeed in returning more than 200 of their « 
friends against 300 of the Left. The battle was indeed lost. — 
Jean-Jacques Wiess had said: a republic of conservatives is | 
“nonsense.” The Republic was to pass into the hands of re- © 
publicans. 

This very experience tended to make it more moderate. The 
elections had shown that in the country as a whole, Right and © 
Left were pretty well balanced in votes and that a slight dis- — 
placement would suffice to change the majority. Thus, al- 
though the attempt of May sixteenth failed, it had lasting — 
effects. On the one hand, until our own time, it has intimi- 
dated the followers of Marshal MacMahon and has pre. 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 437 


vented them from making use of their constitutional powers. 
On the other, it has restrained the republicans by the fear that 
a party of order might form in turn against them. And finally, 
the pains that they had taken to turn against the Right, the 
accusation of being the war party, had led them into a certain 
understanding with Germany. Thiers, who died during these 
events, was in favor of it. Gambetta also was tempted in his 
turn by the advances of Bismarck who was at that moment 
fighting the German Catholics and feared their alliance with 
the French Catholics. Traces ‘of these ideas were to persist. 
We shall henceforth find the republican party men who will 
have a leaning toward an entente with Germany and from that 
fact important consequences will arise. 

The check of May sixteenth did not at first change things as 
much as one would have believed. There were ministries 
formed from the Left Center. Marshal MacMahon, whom 
Gambetta had summoned to submit or resign, remained in the 
presidency and did not resign until the month of January, 1879, 
when he did so in order not to have to sign the dismissal of 
several generals. Jules Grévy was elected in his place, in oppo- 
sition to Gambetta and the radicals. With him was installed 
the great republican bourgeoisie, the people who represented 
law and business. His first declaration was to announce “a 
liberal and truly conservative policy.” Thus, since the Republic 
had defeated and excluded the conservatives, it applied itself 
to reassuring the special interests. Neither reaction nor revo- 
lution was its formula. However, it already had divisions, 
divisions between men, tendencies, and doctrines. To the mod- 
erates of the Left Center, the opportunists of Gambetta’s group, 
to the radical heirs of the Jacobins of whom Clemenceau be- 
came the head, were soon added the socialists. Bitter contests 
began and ministry after ministry fell in rapid succession. It 
became apparent then that anticlericalism cemented the various 
groups of the Left. This was manifested as early as 1880,by 
the decrees rendered against the religious organizations, and the 
Jesuits were the first to be expelled. This question was for a 
long time to occupy the attention of the régime and sometimes 


438 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


it was to be used as a counter diversion, as under Louis XV 
when the ministers were in conflict with the old parliament. 
But, as in the eighteenth century also, anticlericalism, which 
was at first merely political, soon turned into a war against 
Catholicism and the religious idea. 

From the early beginnings of this parliamentary Republic, 
and in the midst of the great confusion, two traits begin to 
stand out clearly. Jules Ferry came to power for the first time. 
He undertook the Tunis expedition with the authority which 
Bismarck had given France in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin, 
with the idea that it would be a good thing for Germany to 
allow France to expend her energy as far as possible from 
Europe. A serious controversy among Frenchmen themselves 
was to arise from the Tunis affair and to recur with regard to 
Egypt and Tonkin. Did not colonial expeditions run the risk 
of dissipating the French strength, distracting public attention 
from her security on the continent and from the lost provinces ? 
There lay the germ of future quarrels. There was another in- 
dication in the fact that at the elections of 1881 the republicans 
won another victory. But the Extreme Left was advancing. 
Gambetta, but lately the idol of Paris, was barely elected at 
Belleville; opportunism was injuring his popularity. It was 
to him, nevertheless, that it was necessary to entrust the min- 
istry. President Grévy resigned himself to it although he re- 
tained a secret hostility, while that of the old radicals, enemies 
of opportunism, burst forth. Fierce accusations were launched 
against Gambetta: he was for war, he aspired to the dictatorship. 
At the end of three months, his ministry, which was to have 
been a “great ministry,” was overturned. His conception of a 
national “Athenian” Republic, in which all parties would be 
reconciled, was also overthrown. Gambetta died in the follow- 
ing year. 

We must give up trying to discern anything in the midst of 
the conflicts which followed, if we do not hold to the two prin- 
ciples which dominated them and which may be summed up in 
the following manner. On one hand, there was a conflict be- 
tween those who accepted the defeat of 1870 and those who did 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 439 


not abandon the hope of wiping out its effects; between those 
who publicly or in their secret thoughts believed with Thiers 
that there was nothing more for France to do but to come to an 
understanding with an all-powerful Germany and content her- 
self in Europe with a réle of second order (a misfortune which 
the colonial expansion was to remedy), and those who, re- . 
fusing to accept the accomplished fact, thought that the policy 
of France should be continental, and that the danger of invasion, 
revealed first in 1875, still existed, and that to the German 
Empire, fortified by its alliances with Austria and Italy, the 
Triple Alliance, it was necessary to oppose a strong army and 
alliances if possible. On the other hand, the nature of things 
was ever leading a fraction of the republicans back to ideas of 
moderation, was inclining them to become reconciled with their 
adversaries of the Right, and to conciliate the conservative in- 
stincts of the country, while the advanced republicans rejected 
these compromises. The agitations of the street, the fall of 
ministries, the elections, all the internal history of the Third 
Republic has been influenced by these currents which were to 
dominate it in turns. 

The Tonkin expedition following that of Tunis, was the 
origin of a long, serious situation. This new colonial enterprise 
in which Jules Ferry, a second time prime minister, had en- 
gaged, was unpopular. It was fought by the radicals with whom 
the Jacobin tradition of patriotism still persisted. Clemenceau, 
their leader, had voted against the treaty of Frankfort. At 
the same time, they attacked the constitution of 1875, accused 
it of having an Orleanist character and beginnings, and de- 
manded its revision. They took the offensive in March, 1885, 
when the news of the disaster of Langson arrived. Jules Ferry, 
whom Clemenceau had already accused of “compromising the in- 
terests of France and the Republic,” was overthrown. Tumult- 
uous scenes took place in Paris against Ferry, “The Tonkinese,” 
whose policy, according to another saying of Clemenceau, made 
of France “the tool of Germany.” <A spirit of opposition of a 
new kind was becoming apparent in Paris and was preparing 
the way for the influence of Boulangism. At the same time, 


440 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the unrest and anxiety were spreading to the provinces. At the 
elections of 1885, for which the scrutin de liste had been reës- 
tablished, two hundred deputies of the Right were elected.* 

As on May sixteenth, a union of the Left formed against the 
union of the Right, but its effect was to make the government 
dependent upon the radicals. It was they who designated Gen- 
eral Boulanger for the ministry of war. This republican mili- 
tarist, who occupied himself with the reorganization of the 
army and who “revived the pompon of the soldier” quickly 
became popular with the Parisian population, the majority of 
which was radical and patriotic. He was acclaimed at the re- 
view of July 14, 1886, to such a degree as to give alarm to the 
republicans of the government. He was also in bad odor with 
the Right for having stricken the names of the princes of 
Orléans from the army lsts at the time when the heads of 
families who had reigned over France had been driven into 
exile. At the same time, Bismarck, who was working unceas- 
ingly to increase the offensive power of Germany, used as a 
pretext the popularity of General Boulanger to obtain some 
military appropriations from the Reichstag. It aroused some 
diplomatic incidents, the most serious of which was the Schnae- — 
belé affair which Jules Ferry managed with prudence and 
which again brought France within a hair’s breadth of war. 
Boulanger then appeared to the men of the Left Center as a 
danger both within and without. But they could not rid them- 
selves of him without breaking with the radicals and drawing | 
closer to the Right, whose neutrality was necessary to them to 
preserve a majority. 

By their campaign against France’s colonial policy, in which 
they accused her of being dominated by Germany, by their 
opposition to the “opportunist” combinations, as well as to the 
alliance of the moderates with reaction, and by their attacks 
against the “Orleanist” Constitution of 1875, the radicals had 
themselves created the “Boulangist” state of mind which took 


1 In the scrutin de liste the elector voted for the general ticket, that is, 
for all the deputies to be elected by the voter’s département ; in the scrutin 
@arrondissement the voter cast his ballot only for the one deputy who 
represented a smaller electoral district. 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 441 


hold upon Paris and soon dominated it. The government, in 
order to rid itself of Boulanger, had named him commander 
of an army corps at Clermont; the Parisian mob wished to re- 
tain him. Although ineligible, his name had already been 
proposed at a partial election and he had received nearly 40,000 
votes. He had become the leader of an opposition, when the 
radicals disavowed him, perceiving that they had themselves 
created a leader for the malcontents, an aspirant for personal 
power and the dictatorship, a danger for the Republic. How- 
ever, the radicals, although they rallied the union of the Left, 
were not followed by all of their former supporters. Roche- 
fort, the former adversary of the Empire, the old Communist, 
the popular radical journalist whose influence was strong in 
Paris, kept the advanced elements of the Left in the party of 
the general. Scandals, a trafficking in decorations, in which 
Wilson, the son-in-law of the president of the Republic, was 
compromised, gave new impetus to the Boulangist and anti- 
parliamentary movement. In December, 1887, the Chamber, 
seeing the danger, obliged Jules Ferry to resign and the Con- 
gress elected Sadi Carnot, a descendant of the Carnot of the 
Convention, to take his place. This sort of purging of the 
republican personnel did not terminate “Boulangism.” The 
general, no longer in active service, had become eligible and 
two departments immediately returned him to the Chamber. 
The situation was reversed. From then on the monarchists 
together with the dissenting radicals voted for him. On Jan- 
uary 27, 1889, Paris elected him in her turn by an enormous 
majority and with an extraordinary enthusiasm. By the admis- 
sion of the government itself, on that day Boulanger would 
only have had to say the word to enter the Elysée and take pos- 
session of the government. He drew back before a coup d’état, 
trusting in the results of the general elections. 

Saved by this hesitation, the republican party defended itself 
vigorously. The union of the parties of the Left was formed 
again as on May sixteenth. Actions against the most ardent of 
the General’s partisans, Dérouléde and the League of Patriots, 
were ordered. Boulanger, himself, brought before the Supreme 


442 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Court, took refuge in Brussels, as did Rochefort also. The 
scrutin d'arrondissement, unadapted to plebiscites, was reéstab- 
lished. But particularly the rural masses, always pacific, had 
remained strangers to this party movement of Paris and the 
large towns. It was sufficient, in order to turn them away 
from Boulangism, to tell them that it would bring war. At the 
elections of 1889, in all of France, hardly forty partisans of 
the general were elected. 

The movement came to an end but it had lasting conse- 
quences. First, it discredited the idea of revision, and the at- 
tacks of the radicals against the Constitution of 1875 became 
less violent and less frequent. France did not go to the length 
of a direct and pure democracy, and the Constitution which 
the conservatives of the National Assembly had elaborated en- 
dured. Finally, the most clear-sighted men of the republican 
party understood the lesson of Boulangism. If on the evening 
of January 27, 1889, the parliamentary Republic almost per- 
ished, the fault went back to Jules Ferry and the policy of the 
effacement of France in Europe. Germany was continually 
growing and arming more and more; could France ignore this 
danger? On this point, the warning of the national instinct, M 
as it manifested itself in its antagonism to Ferry and in Bou- — 
langism was so strong, that new thoughts were aroused in the 
government. Monsieur de Freycinet, who then became prime 
minister, bears witness to this in his memoirs: “The security 
of a great people,” said he, “ought not to rest upon the good will 
of others; it ought to reside in the people itself and its own 
means, in the precautions which it is able to take in the way 
of armaments and alliances.” The Russian alliance, sketched 
out in 1875 by the Duke Decazes and discussed more than 
once in the entourage of Gambetta, was called for by 
Boulangism. In 1890 the government of the French Republic 
began to draw closer to Russia. The following year the visit 
of a French squadron at Kronstadt prepared for the Franco- 
Russian alliance, a counterpart to the Triple Alliance. It was 
a “new situation,” as Monsieur de Freycinet declared some 
weeks later. It was new indeed. Between the two ideas which 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 443 


from the beginning her founders had entertained, the Republic 
had chosen and she had not voted for an entente with the Ger- 
man Empire. 

The alliance with Russia rendered the republican govern- 
ment the service of disarming the patriot opposition, or, as 
they were beginning to call it, the nationalist opposition. To 
the country in general, it was presented as it had been con- 
ceived: a guaranty of peace through the balance of forces. The 
Republic was singularly strengthened by it. At this juncture 
some of the monarchists left their party and helped to form a 
republican Right. Again the régime was becoming conserva- 
tive. A scandal of parliamentary corruption in which some of 
the radicals were involved aided this movement still more. 
After the debates, investigations, and prosecutions to which the 
Panama affair gave rise, some of the leaders of the Left, with 
Clemenceau and Floquet, left the political stage. There fol- 
lowed several years of moderate government, so moderate that 
after the assassination of Sadi Carnot by an anarchist in 1894, 
the president. elected was Casimir-Perier, grandson of the min- 
ister of “resistance” under Louis-Philippe, who was a repre- 
sentative of the haute bourgeoisie. During this time a minister 
in charge of religion, Spuller, a former companion of Gam- 
betta, was also talking of a “new spirit of tolerance, of good 
sense, of justice in religious questions.” Casimir-Perier, vio- 
lently attacked by the socialists, left after a few months com- 
plaining that “the presidency of the Republic was deprived of 
means of action and of control.” He was followed by Félix 
Faure, representing a more recent but equally moderate 
bourgeoisie. 

The republican conservatives like Charles Dupuy and 
Méline governed with a single brief interruption for almost 
‘five years. In spite of the attacks of the radicals and the 
socialists, the moderates, supported by the Right, seemed 
solidly installed in the government. It took two violent crises, 
one within and one without, to dislodge them. 

The Dreyfus affair, through which the radicals, allied this 
time with the socialists, came again into power, and through 


Att HISTORY OF FRANCE 


which Clemenceau returned to public life, was the equivalent 
of a veritable revolution. Around the case of this Jewish offi- 
cer, condemned for treason in 1894 by a court-martial and 
whose innocence was passionately affirmed in 1897, two camps 
formed. His name became a symbol. France was divided into 
Dreyfusites and anti-Dreyfusites. This conflict of doctrines, 
sentiments, and tendencies, in which the conservative and revo- 
lutionary spirits struggled for supremacy, repeated in an 
attenuated and reduced form the great crises of the fourteenth 
century, of the wars of religion, of the Fronde, and of 1789, 
when, as in the Dreyfus affair, the “intellectuals” took part. 
Philosophy and literature again entered the battle. During 
three years the revision of the Dreyfus affair governed the 
policy of France and ended by determining its course. The 
polemics which it drew forth had defined the positions. Those 
against Dreyfus were classed with the Right; those who believed 
in his innocence, with the Left. The conflict became most acute 
in 1899 when the president, Félix Faure, suddenly died. He 
was replaced by Emile Loubet, whom Paris, nationalist for the 
most part, did not receive cordially. To add to the intensity of 
public feeling, Dérouléde and the League of Patriots had at- 
tempted, on the very day of the funeral, a coup d’état which 
failed. As in the time of General Boulanger, and the Six- 
teenth of May, republican resistance through the union of the 
parties of the Left was also restored. 

Only this union, baptized by Clemenceau as “The Bloc,” was 
this time to go very far to the Left. The socialists had become 
the extreme wing of the republican party. The Republic could 
not be defended without them and it was necessary to give them 
a place in the government. When Waldeck-Rousseau organ- 
ized his ministry of republican defense in June, 1899, he called 
to it Alexander Millerand, a deputy of the Extreme Left, a 
defender of the collectivist theories. This choice caused much 
scandal and anxiety among the French bourgeoisie. However, 
what had already happened in the case of some of the radical 
leaders, happened to the socialists. The leaders became 
more moderate and more and more assimilated by their con- 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 445 


servative surroundings. It was not, therefore, the concessions 
to them personally which were most serious, but the concessions 
to their ideas. It was no longer only a question of anticlerical- 
ism, a program common to most republicans of conviction. With 
the Dreyfus affair, antimilitarism had appeared and had been 
one of the most active elements in the trial. Little by little, 
military obligations had been made very nearly equal for every- 
body, the young intellectual entered the barracks with the young 
peasant and the disgust at this servitude had favored the cam- 
paigns of ideas and of the press against the army and its chiefs. 
The republican party, victorious through Waldeck-Rousseau 
and through the High Court which judged the nationalists and 
the royalists during the revision of the Dreyfus case, and which 
in 1871 had been the party of ardent and even exalted patriot- 
ism, was at least inclined, under the influence of the interna- 
tionalist Extreme Left, to neglect the national defense. 

These events which gave preponderance to the advanced 
parties were, moreover, accompanied by another crisis, this time 
an external one, whose consequences were to bring France face 
to face with Germany again. The moderates, who had gov- 
erned without interruption since the Franco-Russian under- 
standing, had adopted in their turn a colonial policy, and the 
alliance of France with Russia had produced an unforeseen 
result. It had brought her nearer to Germany. Between St. 
Petersburg and Berlin good relations existed; William IT, who 
had been reigning since 1888, had much influence with the 
young Emperor Nicholas II who had succeeded his father, 
Alexander III, in 1894. The year after his accession, France, 
in accord with Russia, had agreed to send war vessels to the 
opening of the Kiel Canal. This canal permitted the German 
fleet to pass freely from the Baltic to the North Sea and had 
been paid for out of the French billions of 1871. Behind the 
Franco-Russian alliance a three-power combination was fore- 
shadowed at which the English government was to take umbrage 
because it had been conceived in view of the colonial expansion 
of the great powers of the continent. William IT was giving 
Germany a fleet and was about to pronounce those astounding 


446 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


words, “Our future is on the water.” Russia was expanding in 
the Far East where she was soon to become involved with Japan 
in a disastrous conflict. As for France, it was especially in 
Africa that she was developing her power. In 1882, under the 
influence of Clemenceau and the radical party, the French 
government had lost interest in Egypt which England had oc- 
cupied by virtue of a provisional title. Once there, however, 
she did not leave and it was from thence that she was preparing 
to dominate all eastern Africa from Cairo to the Cape. In 
November, 1898, the French Marchand mission, which started 
from the Congo to reach the upper Nile, had established itself at 
Fashoda. With this pledge in its hands, the French government 
thought itself strong enough to raise again the Egyptian ques- 
tion when England summoned it under a threat of war, to evacu- 
ate the place without delay. Thus, her colonial policy threat- 


ened France with another danger. It was necessary to choose 


between Germany and England. 

Waldeck-Rousseau’s minister of foreign affairs, Théophile 
Delcassé, was of radical origin. He kept the former tradition 
of the party, opposed to distant expeditions and to an alliance 
with the victors of 1870. He liquidated the Fashoda affair 
and France became reconciled with the British government. 
This reconciliation associated her with the interests of England 
and although it gave her a guaranty against Germany it was 
leading her into the danger of a continental war. Such was 
the situation immediately after the agitations of the Dreyfus 
case when the government of republican defense, dependent 
upon the Extreme Left, yielded to the anticlerical and anti- 
military demagogy. Waldeck-Rousseau was succeeded in 1902 
by Emile Combes who, supported by a new majority of radical- 
socialists and socialists as a result of the recent elections, passed 
from the attitude of republican defense to the offensive. 
Waldeck had prosecuted the congregations but not the Church. 
Combes went to the limit of anticlericalism, even to breaking 
off relations with the Holy See and to the separation of Church 
and State. This had long been a part of the program of the 
advanced republicans but had always been deferred. This re- 





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PR PP ee 


THE THIRD REPUBLIC 44) 


ligious war troubled and divided the country by reviving perse- 
cution for opinions and by creating among the French who did 
not share the ideas of the government, a category of suspects 
who were shut out of state offices and looked upon with disfavor 
by the authorities. Politics were even introduced into the army 
itself, which until then had held aloof from civil discord. A 
campaign of reporting officers who attended mass was organ- 
ized. At the same time the most demagogic propaganda was 
spreading freely, even that which attacked the idea of the 
fatherland. The government and all of the officers were in the 
hands of a small number of men and of their protégés, while 
Emile Combes, a disinterested fanatic, sanctioned these abuses 
and disorders. In the majority itself a few republicans began 
to be anxious. Strangely enough it was Alexander Millerand 
who conducted the campaign against a régime which he himself 
called “abject.” A socialist was the first to announce a return 
to moderation. 

A still more remarkable thing was that during this period 
when the national idea was ‘in eclipse Théophile Delcassé, iso- 
lated in the ministry of foreign affairs and working without any 
control, was preparing the very combination from which the 
alliances of 1914 were to arise. In 1902 he had assured him- 
self of the neutrality of Italy in the case of a war provoked by 
Germany. In April, 1904, in agreement with Edward VII, 
all the colonial difficulties between France and England had 
been settled. France was to abandon Egypt to England and 
was to have the right to complete her empire in northern Africa 
through the protectorate of Morocco. Six months later Combes 
was overturned. Rouvier, an opportunist, replaced him. He 
continued the anticlerical policy with a little less severity but 
with the same indifference to foreign problems. At this mo- 
ment, Germany, encouraged by the defeat which Japan had 
just inflicted on the Russians in Manchuria, alleged that the 
Franco-English agreement had injured her interests, and called 
for an international congress on the question of Morocco. Wil- 
liam IT made a threatening speech after he had landed at Tan- 
giers. Morocco was only the pretext for intimidating and 


448 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


coercing France. Delcassé, who favored resisting these preten- 
sions, was disavowed by his colleagues and had to resign on 
June 6, 1905. Thus, within seven years of Fashoda, the 
danger of war again appeared, this time from the German side. 
Another nine years, and the war was to come. The diplomatic 
precautions which France was taking against it were inter- 
preted by the Germans as a reason for complaining that they 
were encircled and therefore a reason for increasing their 
armies, At the Conference of Algésiras, which decided the 
Morocean affair in favor of France, almost all the powers were 
leagued against the Germans; they remained isolated with 
Austria. From that time, Germany was to refuse all confer- 
ences and when the great day had arrived would make war in- 
evitable. However, humiliating as it had been, the recoil of 
1905 and the sacrifice of Delcassé had not been useless. At 
that moment, Russia, the ally of France, was powerless. 
France herself was weakened by long discord. The army was 
not ready and morale was not good. The postponement obtained 
perhaps saved her from complete disaster. 

Henceforth, up to the day of mobilization, France lived un- 
der the threat of Germany. The system of the armed peace, 
that is to say, competition in armaments, which had become 
more and more fierce ever since the founding of German unity, 
was leading Europe towards catastrophe. Germany, with an 
excessive population and large industries, was forced to seek 
outlets and territory. This desire acted as much upon the so- 
cialist masses as upon the general staffs. In order to avoid war 
it was not sufficient that France should accept the loss of Alsace- 
Lorraine as an accomplished fact, and that she should limit her 
military efforts to the maintaining of a merely defensive army. 
That she was doing this was indicated by the fact that the time 
of service had been reduced to two years. The illusion of the 
French democracy was that it would preserve peace because it 
was itself pacific. Nevertheless, it became impossible to ignore 
the extent of the danger. The parties of the Left, who had 
been victorious in all the elections and who had eliminated in 
turn the members of the former Right as well as the old Left 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 449 


Center itself, were split by a new division. The Bloc was di- 
vided both on the internal and the external policy. Socialism 
had become bold and its influence on parliament was out of 
proportion to its real strength in the country. It aroused con- 
tinual agitation among the workmen as well as the government 
employees. In foreign affairs, through its adhesion to the In- 
ternationale, and through its cosmopolitan doctrines, it leaned 
towards an entente with Germany; an impossible entente since 
every concession made by France was followed by new demands 
by the government at Berlin. On this ground, however, the 
socialists found some support among those who, without distinc- 
tion of origin, thought, as Thiers had thought at the time of the 
alarm in 1875, that it was necessary to come to an agreement 
with Germany, and, instead of organizing alliances, to give her 
a pledge of the pacific sentiment of France. Joseph Caillaux, 
who was to incarnate this idea at the head of the radical-social- 
ist party, was the son of a conservative of the Sixteenth of May. 
It was the Jacobin school with Clemenceau, in the republican 
party, who opposed this tendency and who in 1908 first entered 
into conflict with Jaurés, the leader of the Extreme Left. 
Thus, under the appearance of unity, while the immense ma- 
jority in parliament were proclaiming that there were no true 
republicans except the republicans of the Left, there was a 
schism. While the most extreme doctrines were being pro- 
fessed officially, a new moderate party was forming in secret. 
We even see a former socialist, Aristide Briand, who had 
become prime minister, stopping the most dangerous strikes, 
such as that of the railroad, and after having realized the 
separation of Church and State, talking of “Pacification,”’ as 
Spuller in 1894 had talked of the “New Spirit.” 

Germany, in the meantime, daily more determined upon war, 
did not cease to seek a quarrel with France. The object was 
always Morocco where France was extending her protectorate. 
In 1908 there was a new alarm in connection with an incident 
which had arisen at Casablanca, and which the Clemenceau min- 
istry settled through arbitration. In 1911 there was a re- 
currence of the same thing; a German ship took up its position 


450 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


before Agadir of the southern Moroccan coast, and the govern- 
ment of Berlin after this manifestation of force, signified its 
desire to obtain a “compensation.” Joseph Caillaux, who then 
directed the government, came to terms. The compensation was 
accorded to Germany from the French possessions in the Congo. 
For Germany it was not only a diplomatic success but a real 
advantage. The German press turned these acquisitions to ridi- 
cule and complained that the great German Empire had been 
tricked. 

Two lessons were learned from the Agadir episode. Ger- 
many found out that Morocco was a poor casus belli because 
France, threatened, kept her alliance with Russia and her en- 
tente with England, while the Germans would not even be fol- 
lowed by Austria on such a pretext as Morocco. The other 
lesson was for France; her concessions only served to convince 
Germany of the weakness of the French, and made her more 
bellicose. Both lessons bore fruit. Germany ceased to interest 
herself in Morocco and directed her attention to affairs in the 
east where the Turkish revolutions of 1908 and the accession 
of the Young Nationalist Liberals to positions of power in old 
Turkey had put in motion in the Balkans and along the Danube 
the new nationalities whose claims were threatening the com- 
posite Empire of Austria Hungary. In France the Agadir 
incident brought the most nationalistic of the men of the Left 
to power. Raymond Poincaré, a republican from Lorraine, 
who did not accept the formula of Thiers, the policy of “for- 
getting,” whence had risen the party who favored an alliance 
with Germany, became prime minister in January, 1912. Al- 
most always on the margin of political life there had been in 
literature, in the press, and in the intellectual world generally 
a continuous movement against the neglect of the national ideal. 
The name of Maurice Barrés will ever remain attached to this 
movement. The nationalist doctrine, affirmed and conquered 
during the Dreyfus case, served now as a sort of revival, just 
as in the time of General Boulanger it had led to the Russian 
alliance. Similarly, in the midst of the electoral triumphs of 
the Republic which was no longer contested in the political as- 





THE THIRD REPUBLIC 451 


semblies, the criticism of the democracy by Charles Maurras 
and his school, produced an antithesis which led the broader 
minded of the republicans to recognize the utility of an oppos- 
ing doctrine. This had formerly been proclaimed by Gambetta 
but had not existed for a long time. Following these discus- 
sions, Marcel Sembat, a deputy of the Extreme Left, wrote a 
curious pamphlet whose name would not have been thought of 
fifteen years earlier, “Make a king, but if you cannot, make 
peace.” At the same time the essential principle of democracy, 
universal suffrage, was becoming strangely altered, and a per- 
sistant campaign for proportional representation, that is to say, 
for the right of minorities, was gaining adherents and was go- 
ing to change the physiognomy of political life which up to that 
time had been founded upon the rigid majority system. 

The two years which preceded the war were filled with signs 
which escaped the crowd, but in which observers found warn- 
ings. In 1912, in the first Balkan war, the Turks were con- 
quered by a coalition of Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbians. The 
following year the members of this coalition were fighting over 
the spoils and the Bulgarians were punished for their aggres- 
sion. As a result, Bulgaria and Turkey were to have an ac- 
count to settle and were to become allies of Germany. These 
events were followed with interest by Russia. They alarmed 
the two German powers by menacing Austria and gave them 
the desire to checkmate the Slavs. The opportunity which Ger- 
many was looking for began to take form, and a troubled atmos- 
phere overspread Europe. In January, 1913, Raymond Poin- 
caré had been elected president of the Republic in place of 
Armand Fallières, and under his influence France became vigi- 
lant. Louis Barthou, a former moderate, called by Poincaré to 
the ministry, was successful in getting the Chambers to accept 
a return to the three-year military service necessary for reén- 
forcing the army of the first line. Both publicly and in secret 
symptoms and information multiplied. They showed that Ger- 
many was marching towards war; the imperial government 
had just levied an extraordinary tax of one billion in order to 
increase its material and effectives. In the meantime in France 


452 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


the unpopular three-year law brought the radical socialists back 
to power and they endeavored to reconstitute the Left Bloc 
against the moderates. On the eve of the war, in the general 
depression spread by a threat, which one felt but could not de- 
fine, the conflict of the two tendencies of the republican party 
became more acute. Joseph Caillaux, again prime minister, at- 
tacked and was attacked. Aristide Briand denounced this 
“plutocratic demagogue.” During this campaign, Madame 
Caillaux shot and killed Gaston Calmette, editor of the Figaro, 
and this murder recalled that of Victor Noir, a few months be- 
fore the War of 1870. It was the crime which precedes and 
announces the greater crimes. That at Sarajevo, which was 
to serve as pretext for the war, followed soon after. Signs of 
blood were everywhere. 

When on June 28, 1914, the archduke, heir to the throne of 
Austria Hungary, was assassinated with his wife in the little 
village of Sarajevo, by some Slav conspirators, the mass of the 
French people were very far from believing that there would be 
war. In the April elections, the new Bloc of the Left had car- 
ried the day. A Ribot ministry which favored the three-year 
law, had been overturned on the very day that it had presented 
itself before the Chamber, and it was to a recently converted « 
socialist, René Viviani, that President Poincaré had to turn in 
order to attempt to maintain the military organization which 
had just been reconstituted. The French democracy, indiffer- 
ent to distant events, lived in such quietude that it hardly no- 
ticed the ultimatum of Austria to Serbia. The masses did not 
see the consequences of this any more than they had of the 
“incident” of Sarajevo. At bottom they believed war was im- 
possible, the phenomenon of another age which progress had 
abolished. It imagined that even if William IT and the Prus- 
sian officers wanted it, the German people would not follow 
them. Ten days later, the most terrible war of modern times 
broke upon them. 





CHAPTER XXII 
WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 


Ir, in the years which preceded 1914, anything seemed to 
guarantee peace, it was that the vanquished of 1871 never 
thought of taking their revenge. Moreover, Germany was so 
strong that no one thought of attacking her. Ordinarily, the 
victor has no desire to put his victory in question, but Germany 
wanted war. She had a surplus of men; as in the early days 
of her history, she was driven to invade her neighbors. In the 
meantime, in order that she should not have to fight all Europe 
alone, and in order that she should keep at least Austria as 
ally, it was necessary that war should come on some pretext 
which touched Austria’s rather than Germany’s interests. This 
was just the opporunity which the conflict between Austria and 
Serbia offered Germany. Thus it was from the distant regions 
of Europe, as in the seventeenth century after White Mountain, 
and in the nineteenth, after Sadowa, that war came to seek out 
the French. 

France so little suspected what was going to happen that 
President Poincaré and his prime minister, Viviani, were pay- 
ing a ceremonial visit to the Czar when the Austrian ultimatum 
was drawn up in agreement with Germany, in such terms that 
no one thought that Serbia would accept them. This ultimatum 
was sent to Belgrade on July twenty-third, at the moment 
when Poincaré and Viviani were leaving St. Petersburg. At 
Paris, the German ambassador immediately warned France 
that any intervention whatsoever in this affair would have “in- 
calculable’ consequences. France and the friendly powers in- 
tervened only to advise Serbia to yield; and the Serbian re- 


sponse was the acceptance of every point save one which was to 
453 


454 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


be left to arbitration. But Austria was resclved to crush 
Serbia and put an end to the Slavic peril which threatened to 
split up the empire. Germany was determined to have war. 
Both powers refused the European conference which England 
proposed. The Hague Tribunal was likewise declined. The 
international institutions through which the world for twenty 
years had hoped to avert the peril which was approaching, did 
not count for anything. Two days after the sending of the 
ultimatum Austria declared war on Serbia. Within the space of 
a week the mechanism of the alliance was brought into play and 
one part of Europe threw itself at the other. All that had been 
repressed with difficulty since 1871 exploded at once. Every- 
thing served to increase the massacre instead of stopping it. The 
military forces which had accumulated through the system of 
the armed peace, all the wealth and resources created by long 
years of work and civilization, were like fuel to the flames. 
The equilibrium of the diplomatic systems, the interdependence 
of interests and the very immensity of the catastrophe which 
such a shock would produce, everything that the world had 
thought was calculated to prevent the great conflict, proved un- 
availing. The very obstacles fed it. Neither democracy nor 
international socialism offered any hindrance. The democratic 
war of people against people was only “more terrible,” as 
Mirabeau had formerly predicted, and no one could stop it by 
the means which had limited the wars of former times. 

As early as July fifteenth, Germany’s determination had 
made turning back impossible for everybody. The mobilization 
of some led to that of others. Austria having mobilized all her 
forces, Russia mobilized hers in turn. In this legitimate meas- 
ure of precaution Germany found the pretext that she was seek- 
ing. On August first she declared war against Russia and sum- 
moned France to announce her intentions. As the French gov- 
ernment contented itself by replying that France would do what 
her interests demanded, the German government pretended that 
France had attacked her. The government of the Republic 
could not escape its destiny and there was something tragic in 
the efforts of the last hour. President Poincaré had written in 


i ee 


WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 455 


vain to King George to warn him that a word from England pro- 
nounced in time could still turn Germany aside. England had a 
parliament, and liberal and pacifist ministers, and would not 
intervene until the moment when Belgium was invaded. 
France was obliged in her turn to mobilize on August second. 
The government was still reassuring the people and telling them 
that “mobilization was not war.” Viviani ordered the French 
troops to withdraw ten kilometers from the frontier in order 
to prove that the French were not the aggressors. But it was 
impossible to refuse to fight. If France had declared her neu- 
trality, disavowed the Russian alliance, Germany would have 
demanded that she give up Toul and Verdun. She would have 
defeated Russia and then held France completely in her power. 
France had to defend herself or accept the yoke. 

The French people understood. Mobilization well prepared 
by the staff office took place not only with order but with confi- 
dence. Germany had counted upon French decadence. She 
thought that the war would be a signal for a revolution which 
was even reported in the countries of central Europe. She was 
mistaken. The assassination of the socialist leader, Jaurés, 
on the evening of July thirty-first had not caused the slightest 
trouble. The nation was united for defense. What it did not 
know was how insufficient her material preparation for the war 
was, and to what carnage she was going. The troops were still 
wearing their old pantalon rouge, red trousers, a veritable tar- 
get. Her 75’s were a formidable weapon but they were power- 
less against the superiority of the German heavy artillery. 
Years of negligence and of lack of foresight were paid for by 
the lives of thousands upon thousands of Frenchmen. 

Anger against the aggressor had at one fell swoop swept 
away many illusions. What sustained the confidence of the 
French this time was the feeling that they were not alone as 
they had been in 1870. They knew the Germans were strong 
and numerous. But Russia was a reservoir of men. And new 
allies were continually joining forces with France. On the 
third of August Germany declared war on France. The day 
before, violating her treaties, she summoned Belgium to allow 


456 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


her armies free passage; but Belgium immediately decided to 
defend herself. This decision obliged England, who was still 
hesitating, to intervene because she had promised in 1839 to 
guarantee the neutrality of Belgium and also because it was a 
law of history that she would not tolerate that a great European 
power should gain possession of the mouth of the Scheldt. The 
solution which had been found for the old problem of the Low 
Countries under the reign of Louis-Philippe, proved salutary 
for France. Not only was Belgium, which had become a 
nation, at her side in this great war, but she had drawn the 
whole British Empire into it; and when England enters a Euro- 
pean conflict, history has shown that she does not withdraw 
until she is victorious. 

France, Russia, Belgium, England, this “Entente,” already 
so vast, seemed more than capable of holding its own against 
Germany and Austria and of defeating them. Italy, faithful 
to the agreement which she had signed in 1902, hastened to in- 
form France that she would remain neutral, thus freeing the 
fatter from deep anxiety about her Alpine frontier. The only 
support which Germany was to find was that of Turkey and 


Bulgaria, a by no means negligible support because it compli- — 


cated and prolonged the struggle, but it was insufficient to give 
her the victory after her surprise blow had failed. What 
France never suspected in 1914 was that she would need many 
other allies to put an end to the great military empire; so 
many allies that she was one day to be a slave to them and 
from them new difficulties were to arise. 

In truth she had escaped a frightful disaster by a chance 
which immediately seemed like a miracle. Germany had 
thought that France would crumble morally and _ politically 
under the shock and she was mistaken; her aggression had pro- 
duced that phenomenon of the “sacred union.” But there was 
no less unity in Germany and on August fourth, in both parlia- 
ments, at Berlin as well as at Paris the socialists themselves had 
approved everything. With the consent of all Germany, an 
engine of war such as the world has seldom seen was launched 
against France. 


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WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 457 


Even the least confident of the French were surprised by the 
rapidity of the invasion. When they finally understood the 
military force of Germany they thought there would be several 
battles of doubtful outcome near the frontiers and far from 
Paris. After the necessary time for putting enormous armies 
in march, operations properly so-called began on August seven- 
teenth. By the twenty-second, the French and English who had 
gone to the help of Belgium were forced to fall back on Charleroi 
and Mons. The Germans were entering French territory en 
masse, in the space of a few days were occupying the north of 
France, and were opening the way to Paris while the Allies 
were beating a retreat. France, whose nerves the government 
was handling gently, only learned of the situation by one of 
those laconic communications with which it had to be content 
in view of the general interest of the country. “From the 
Somme to the Vosges,” said the dispatch. It revealed what had 
been kept hidden—invasion, the terrible thing that the people 
had seen three times in the last century. And the Somme was 
soon to become the Marne. Some German advance guards had 
appeared within a few kilometers of Paris. The government, 
in order to avoid being shut up and besieged as in 1870, had 
left for Bordeaux. It was at this moment that the unhoped- 
for event occurred which saved everything. 

The battle of the Marne has been much discussed. History 
will say that Joffre won it because he alone would have been 
responsible if he had lost it. General Galliéni was without 
doubt the first to see the nature of the maneuver that should be 
tried against Von Kluck’s army which had advanced too 
quickly. Joffre, with an astounding coolness which had not 
left him since Charleroi, had the merit to understand the situa- 
tion and instead of continuing the retreat, to send the com- 
mand to all the French forces to advance. It was one of the 
finest military recoveries that history has ever seen, and Ger- 
many was disconcerted by it. The gigantic battle of the Marne 
which extended from the immediate vicinity of Paris as far as 
the Moselle, lasted from the sixth until the thirteenth of Sep- 
tember and ended in the defeat and general retreat of the 


458 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


enemy. Paris was saved. The invasion had been stopped. 
The Germans had proposed to put France hors de combat in six 
weeks and then to turn immediately against Russia. This plan 
had failed. In Germany a few clairvoyant men began to under- 
stand that the war was lost. 

It was still far from being won by the French. After the 
battle of the Marne, France believed that her victory was com- 
plete, and that her territory would be delivered as after Valmy. 
Her armies, fatigued by their retreat and then by their prodi- 
gious efforts, and deprived of the munitions which they should 
have had, could not prevent the Germans from establishing 
themselves on a new line, reaching from the Oise to the Ar- 
gonne. By the seventeenth of September the front was stabi- 
lized and trenches were dug facing each other. Then began a 
continuous and terribly murderous sort of siege warfare. The 
Germans tried vainly to resume the offensive and again to sur- 
round the Anglo-French armies, passing this time through mari- 
time Flanders, through the regions of the canals and dunes 
where so many of the old wars of the Low Countries had taken 
place. Here, unheard-of feats of arms took place, like that at 
Dixmude. Inundation helped to bar the route to the Germans. 
In the beginning of November, after the battle of the Yser, they 
were forced to realize that they could not pass, but the Allies 
had only just prevented it. 

There was fighting and would be fighting for a long time to 
come from the borders of the North Sea to the Caucasus, from 
the Baltic to the banks of the Suez canal, Turkey having joined 
the camp of the enemy. The war was developing and feeding 
on itself. It was prolonged by the very equilibrium of the 
belligerents; Germany finding in her preparation in time of 
peace and in her patient organization sufficient resources to 
balance the Allies’ superiority in numbers. The war was also 
prolonged because Germany could not ask for peace without 
admitting her check while the Allies had been fortifying them- 
selves against their own weaknesses. On the fourth of Sep- 
tember at the very moment that the battle of the Marne was 
taking place, they had signed the Pact of London by which they 


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WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 459 


agreed not to conclude a separate peace. Still more than this 
_ contract, the situation itself guaranteed that no matter what 
happened, England at least would not give up the struggle. 
Save for a small corner of her territory, Belgium was occupied 
by the Germans; Antwerp and Ostend were in their hands. 
Never would England, who had intervened as soon as Belgian 
neutrality had been violated, concede to Germany what for cen- 
turies she had not conceded to France. Belgium thus became 
what she had so often been in history: the point around which 
the policy of Europe was organized and upon which peace and 
war depended. As for France, with her richest territory also 
invaded and occupied, while hostilities were being carried on 
within her borders it would not have been possible, even had she 
wished to do so, to withdraw from the engagement of Septem- 
ber fourth. The armies of England had entered her country 
to fight at her side, and their effectives, so feeble at first, 
were increasing. England who had protested against conscrip- 
tion was to end by resorting to it. Her efforts corresponded to 
her tenacity and the destiny of France was one with hers. It 
is none the less true that the struggle was taking place on 
French soil, and that France was suffering its ravages, that the 
Germans were pillaging and destroying the occupied regions 
and maltreating the inhabitants. It was a frightful calamity, 
without example since the time of the barbaric invasions, and 
the effects of which will long be felt. In the meantime it was 
also the French soldiers who had to make the heaviest sacri- 
fices and who were found wherever there was danger. 

The war governed and directed everything. Germany her- 
self, after having provoked it, was a slave to it. ‘Until vic- 
tory, until the end” became the watchword on both sides of the 
trenches. In France, a few months earlier, those like Dérou- 
léde who still talked of the lost provinces, passed for dangerous 
fanatics. ‘The retaking of Alsace-Lorraine was, however, the 
“war aim” which without discussion France immediately as- 
signed herself, so naturally that it seemed she had never ceased 
to think of it. 

The goal was far ahead and France would have many dangers 


460 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


to encounter before she attained it. And first of all it was neces- 
sary to drive out the enemy and put an end to the hateful 
trenches, the exhausting subterranean warfare in which men 
perished daily in minor actions. The year 1915 passed in 
fruitless efforts to pierce the German front. In March a first 
offensive failed in Champagne and a second in September suc- 
ceeded no better. Another, after a fortunate beginning which 
made the Allies overconfident, failed in Artois in May and 
June. At this juncture, Italy renouncing her neutrality, en- 
tered the Entente; France had still another ally but the war 
was spreading in Europe like a conflagration. In October the 
Bulgarians joined with Germany. Turkey had already cut the 
French communications with Russia. In the Dardanelles at 
Gallipoli, by land and by sea, the English and French were 
trying vainly to open up a way through. Thanks to Bulgaria, 
Germany and Austria were able to crush Serbia and form a 
continuous line as far as Asia Minor. France and England dis- 
cussed for a long time the question as to whether it was best to 
abandon the Orient to Germany, altogether, before they decided 
to undertake the expedition of Salonika, proposed by France 
and opposed by England. It was not only a new military ef- 
fort which would be imposed upon them. They had to consider 
a revision of the map of Europe and promise Greece, whom the 
Allies needed and who was uncertain, an extension of territory. 
Her king, Constantine, the brother-in-law of William II, was 
leaning toward Germany. Thus the extension of the war into 
the eastern part of Europe complicated things still more. And, 
what was more serious, it was in this year, 1915, while Germany 
was repelling the assaults in Artois and in Champagne, that 
she, overturning her original plan, dealt a violent blow at 
Russia and took possession of Poland. In its turn the Russian 
front became immobilized and was far removed. The alliance 
with this vast empire of 120 million subjects, which had given 
so much hope, rendered a great service at the beginning of the 
eampaign. Without the Russian army in 1914, the German 
invasion might have submerged France. But in 1915 Russia 
could no longer menace Germany. There was reason to fear, 


WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 461 


when one considered her history, that she would make a separate 
peace. In order to hold her, France and England went so far 
as to offer her Constantinople which they had never dreamed of 
doing before. Nothing shows more clearly than this overturn- 
ing of the great political traditions, the peril to which the 
Allies felt themselves exposed. 

This peril was great in 1916. Reassured on the side of 
Russia, the Germans turned with fresh troops upon France. 
They in their turn wished to pierce the front and they had 
chosen Verdun in order to attract the great part of the French 
army, defeat it, and force the French to sue for peace. The tak- 
ing of Verdun would have had an immense effect in Europe. 
The name of this old city immediately became a symbol. The 
fate of the war was attached to it and that is why in France 
both the military leaders and the government decided to resist 
at any cost. The battles which were fought there and which 
lasted nearly six months were the most formidable in history. 
Through the continual deluge of artillery fire, by the fury of 
the assaults, this corner of France, from February until Aug- 
ust, 1916, was an inferno. Hundreds of thousands of men 
fought there, and there again the French sacrificed themselves 
en masse. 

This check to the Germans, which cost them dearly, com- 
pelled them to change their methods. Their “peace offensives” 
began. In possession of strong positions everywhere, they 
hoped to put an end to the Allies through fatigue and so to 
withdraw from the war with the advantage on their side. The 
intervention of Roumania at the end of August, 1916, was a 
new diversion which in addition to the resistance at Verdun and 
to a vigorous “reply to Verdun” launched by the Allies on the 
Somme, revived the hope of the Entente. However, Roumania 
was crushed in a few weeks while a new difficulty was arising 
in Greece which the French had to patrol and disarm after the 
treasonable massacre of some French soldiers in the Zappeion at 
Athens. Within less than a century after the Greek war of 
independence when France passionately supported the Greek 
fight for liberty, this ambush was her reward. 


462 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


Thus the war went on, renewing itself unceasingly, destroy- 
ing human lives and swallowing up the accumulated wealth of 
several generations. As an effect of these monstrous happen- 
ings, many things began to give way in Europe. Lassitude, de- 
moralization, and revolt, the phenomena upon which Germany 
was counting, and which she was trying to produce, began to 
manifest themselves among the Allies before they did in Ger- 
many. In Russia, the weak point of the Entente, the event 
watched for by Germany took place; the revolution by over- 
turning Nicholas IT deprived France of an ally who, in spite 
of the uncertainties of his character, had remained faithful to 
her. And when the control of the Czar disappeared, Russia 
sank into chaos. The revolution, still nationalistic at first, by 
March, 1917, was spreading indiscipline and was rapidly 
breaking up the Russian army. It thus ceased to count for the 
Entente even before the Bolsheviks, having seized the power, 
signed peace with Germany. In spite of all that was done in the 
countries of the Allies to represent the events in Russia under 
favorable colors, they had their echo even in France. Mutinies 
broke out in the army. At the same time, there awakened in 
internal politics a spirit which since 1914 seemed to have dis- 
appeared. The days of the “sacred union” and of zeal against 
the invasion were receding. Personal rivalries had appeared 
again in parliament. Unstable ministries succeeded each other. 
Under weak, irresolute men the government vacillated. A 
“defeatist” propaganda was doing its work and the minister 
of the interior, Malvy, was publicly accused of favoring it. 
The prime minister, Painlevé, wished to prosecute the accuser, 
Léon Daudet, on the pretext of a plot against the government. 
In reality the two tendencies which had been clashing for forty 
years appeared again. If France was to conduct the war to a vic- 
torious conclusion, something more than a firm government to 
react against this giving-way was needed. It was necessary 
that this government should be exercised by those who had no 
leaning towards Germany. ‘The situation itself called to the 
government, with Clemenceau, the Jacobin tradition of public 
safety, the radical tradition which had determined the war to 





WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 463 


the last ditch in 1871 and then the opposition to the “policy 
of forgetting.” In November, 1917, Clemenceau became prime 
minister with this program within and without: “My policy is 
war (“Je fais la guerre”). He immediately prosecuted the dis- 
graceful cases of treason and dealt a blow at their head by 
accusing Joseph Caillaux of having relations with the enemy 
and of plotting against the safety of the state. As for Malvy, 
Clemenceau, in the presence of the Senate, accused him of com- 
promising the interests of which he had been put in charge, and 
the former minister of the interior asked himself to be brought 
before the High Court which condemned him to banishment. 
Clemenceau and the men of his generation had been nourished 
in the history of the French Revolution. In his present action 
there was a much softened memory of the Terror. 

It was time that some impulse be given to France. The 
brilliant effort of 1914 could not alone sustain her, and even 
if Germany likewise was weary, she was entirely in the hands 
of the new military leaders whom the war had brought for- 
ward. No longer having to occupy themselves with the Rus- 
sian front, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were preparing a last 
violent offensive in France before the new and unhoped-for aid 
which was coming to the Entente could be made effective. In 
her furious attempts to break through the blockade in which 
she was held by the English fleet, Germany, by her unrestricted 
submarine warfare, had provoked the United States and had 
made even far-away America herself feel the danger of a Ger- 
man victory. The Americans threw their weight into the 
balance at the moment of Russia’s defection and their number 
came just in time to replace, in the minds of the French, the lost 
weight. By intervening almost at the last hour, with entirely 
fresh forces, the United States was to contribute to the fall of 
Germany. ‘They were to demoralize her above all by taking 
away her hope of conquering. But, although President Wilson 
declared war on April 2, 1917, the United States would not 
be in position to take part in the struggle before many long 
months, An intact America was to arrive at the end of the war 
in an exhausted Europe and President Wilson was to be master 


464 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


of the peace, as France had been under Richelieu, by not inter- 
vening until the last period of the Thirty Years War. Only 
President Wilson did not understand European questions. Al- 
though belligerents, the United States made a point of calling 
themselves the associates, and not the allies of the Entente, 
and their government held itself ready to play the rôle of ar- 
bitrator or meditator which it had already several times at- 
tempted to assume. On the eve of victory one could begin to 
see the difficulties of peace arising. 

But before she was conquered Germany was to prove that she 
could still be formidable. In 1918, as in 1914, she played and 
lost. As in 1914 also, she came near succeeding. If, until 
that time, she had held her own against so many adversaries, it 
was above all to her political and military organization that she 
owed it. After that it was to the faults of the Allies who had 
not understood how to unite their efforts. They had many 
leaders; time and again they had allowed themselves to be at- 
tacked one by one, while the entire enemy coalition was con- 
ducted by the German general staff. In France there was an 
isolated British front; on March 21, 1918, Ludendorff attacked 
it and drove it back. An entire English army was retreating 
and the Germans might well think that they were opening a 
new road to Paris. Bombarded in the daytime by mysterious 
long-distance cannon, and at night by airplane, the French 
government held itself ready as in 1914, to leave the capital. 
In the midst of this peril, it was again the French soldiers 
who were sacrificed and who stopped the rush. The common 
danger which had become as grave as on the first days of in- 
vasion, at least brought about what nothing else had hitherto 
accomplished: a French general, Foch, finally received entire 
control of the Allied armies. From that time on, the war had 
direction and method. A battle of more than seven months was 
beginning which was to be the last and which the general in 
chief was determined not to lose. Stopped everywhere after 
some passing successes due to surprise attacks, before Amiens 
and Compiègne, in Flanders and on the Chemin-des-Dames, the 


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WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 465 


Germans had returned as far as the Marne and in July were 
there defeated a second time. This was the moment that Foch 
had foreseen and for which he had been preparing in order 
that this second victory of the Marne should not stop short as 
the first had done. He passed to the offensive and without giv- 
ing the enemy time to breathe, pursued and harassed him, oblig- 
ing him at each step to yield a little of the territory which had 
been conquered and occupied for four years. 

On November 11, 1918, an armistice, “generous to the point 
of imprudence,” was accorded to the German army, saved it 
from complete disaster and permitted it to recross the Rhine 
without having capitulated. Judging that Germany was con- 
quered, that French soil was freed and that he did not have the 
right to continue the frightful carnage any longer, Foch yielded 
to the advice of the Allied governments. In the East, Bulgaria 
and Turkey had first given way. Austria was going to pieces 
and Germany herself was a prey to disorder. The Hapsburg 
and Hohenzollern thrones as well as those of all the German 
sovereigns, were falling one after the other. The power which 
had made Europe tremble and against which twenty-seven na- 
tions had been leagued together, had been stricken to earth. The 
Germans left France and Belgium in haste as William IT had 
left Germany. This was one of those falls into nothingness and 
chaos, after a period of grandeur, of which the German Empire 
and its dynasties have left so many examples in history. 

It seemed as though the victory of the Allies could not be 
more complete. It remained to take advantage of it. The re- 
lief of France after the armistice of November eleventh, which 
put an end to more than four years of slaughter and anguish, 
was inexpressible. However, nearly 1,500,000 men had per- 
ished, ten departments had been ravished, the fantastic sum of 
more than two hundred billions, an amount that one would have 
hardly believed could be realized, had been swallowed up. For 
the moment no one took account of the upheaval which the war 
had wrought and which would change the conditions of existence 
in the country. The French people thought that everything 


466 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


was going to be happy and easy, when other painful days were 
just beginning. 

The establishment of peace was at first deceiving. A victory 
which had cost so dearly seemed to promise the French ample 
compensations. But a victory won by so many did not leave 
her hands free. Experience had taught that preliminaries of 
peace should be imposed upon the enemy in the days im- 
mediately following the armistice. This precaution, which vic- 
tors had never before failed to take, was neglected. But the 
Allies had agreed upon nothing. An agreement which fixed 
the part of each after the victory had been signed in 1916. 
The defection of Russia, and still more, the intervention of the 
United States had made this a dead letter. The French pro- 
gram was reduced to an imprecise formula: “Restitutions, 
reparations, guaranties.” As for President Wilson, he had an- 
nounced a program in fourteen points, a little more detailed 
but almost as vague, and one which would demand much work 
and discussion before it could be applied to the European reali- 
ties. Moreover, the common danger having disappeared, each 
of the Allies returned to their personal interests, the English 
preoccupied with the sea and the French with their security on 
the continent. It was not only in the midst of a confusion of 
ideas, but in a conflict of traditions and interests that the Con- 
ference of Paris was to elaborate a series of treaties which 
changed the entire aspect of Europe determining the ruin of 
the Austro-Hungarian Empire and reviving states which had 
disappeared, like Poland and Bohemia, rebaptized Czecho- 
slovakia. Other states received such considerable additions that 
they were more than doubled; such was the case with Serbia, 
which had become Jugoslavia. For the most part these trans- 
formations had taken place at the expense of the Empire of the 
Hapsburgs, which had been destroyed and dismembered, while 
Germany, preserving her unity, restored, besides the Polish 
provinces, only what she had taken from Denmark, in 1864, 
and from France, in 1871. Under no conditions would the Al- 
lies consent to allow France other frontiers than those of 1815. 
Sedan was effaced but not Waterloo. During the stormy dis- 


PR ie ee eS A 


WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 467 


cussions of the Paris Conference, it became plain that hence- 
forth England, having annihilated the German naval power, 
would distrust France more than Germany. 

And France was going to find herself face to face with Ger- 
many in regulating one of the most important and most difficult 
matters that had yet arisen. The treaty said that Germany was 
to repair the immense ruins that she had left in France. 
Neither ready money nor indemnity fixed once for all was de- 
manded of her, but some billions whose total amount was to 
be fixed at some later date. The occupation of the left bank 
of the Rhine was to be the pledge of the payments as well as a 
protection for the countries of the West until the day when 
Germany, having disarmed as the terms of the treaty compelled 
her to do, and having given proof of her good intentions, should 
enter the League of Nations conceived by President Wilson to 
maintain peace and harmony among the nations. This was 
somewhat similar to the Holy Alliance which France had en- 
tered shortly after 1815 and which was conceived by the Czar 
Alexander. Such were the broad lines of the peace concluded 
at Versailles, June 28, 1919, on the anniversary of the crime 
at Sarajevo, in that same Gallery of Mirrors where on January 
18, 1871, the German Empire had been proclaimed. Two 
obscure delegates of the new German Republic signed with the 
representatives of the twenty-seven nations from all parts of the 
world who had taken part in the struggle, many in an honorary 
way. Other treaties on the same model were signed in differ- 
ent places in the neighborhood of Paris, with what remained of 
Austria, that is to say a small republic which was forbidden to 
reunite with Germany; and with Hungary and Bulgaria, while 
Turkey rejected the conditions which were imposed upon her. 

After a war which had been fought by many peoples came a 
peace which involved the interests of many peoples. It was a 
mixture of diverse conceptions, of the principle of equilibrium 
and of nationalities, a peace which postponed many questions 
until later and which would still have to be interpreted and ap- 
plied. In France, especially, critics were not lacking. As for 
Germany, in spite of her crumbled grandeur and the disorder 


468 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


which had followed the fall of the Hohenzollerns, she was not 
resigned to submit to the consequences of her defeat. She was 
already protesting against the treaty of Versailles and France’s 
great task was to be to impose its execution upon her, impeded 
rather than aided by her former allies. In a transformed world, 
where from being the conquered one she had become victorious, 
France was to find again the permanent laws of her history; be- 
tween England and Germany, she was still compelled to make 
her way. 

Since 1914 there had been no elections in France. Universal 
suffrage had not been consulted. The Chamber was the same one 
which had been appointed in protest against the three-year mili- 
tary service, but which, under the stress of necessity, had 
voted all the measures of the levy en masse, had first accepted 
the “sacred union,” and then, after signs of weakness, followed 
Clemenceau, who had bolstered it up, to the bitter end. Its 
term had expired before the war was finished and had been pro- 
longed because, as was said, a good half of the electors were 
mobilized, but which meant in reality that the government did 
not wish to resort to a plebiscite on the question of war or peace. 
The electors were not even allowed to express themselves on the 
treaty of Versailles. The treaty had already been ratified 
when the elections of November 16, 1919, took place. For the 
first time the old voting by arrondissement was abandoned and 
the system of proportional representation was applied with a 
few remaining limitations. At this juncture, a revolutionary 
movement which, starting in Russia, was spreading over Ger- 
many, alarmed the peaceable masses of the French people. The 
menace of a veritable socialism which would confiscate property, 
joined with the discontent against the parties who had been so 
greatly deceived before the war, brought an entirely new ma- 
jority into power. It was not that France had changed so 
much; a change of a few hundred thousand votes was suffi- 
cient to give the victory to the moderates and conservatives 
who were united on the lists of the national Bloc. Clemenceau 
and the Jacobin school had contributed to this success by con- 
ducting the war to a victorious conclusion and in discrediting, 


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WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 469 


together with Malvy and Caillaux, one whole section of the 
Left. Only, the new Chamber, tending toward the Right, did 
not take kindly to the Jacobin spirit. It also represented the 
disappointment which the peace had caused, the imperfections 
of which were beginning to be felt. Clemenceau, a candidate 
for president, was not elected, and Paul Deschanel who had 
promised an end of anticlericalism and a resumption of diplo- 
matic relations with the Holy See, succeeded Poincaré. Thus 
Clemenceau and his collaborators were removed from power. 
The men who had drawn up the treaty of Versailles were not 
to be the men to apply it. The country had taken account of 
their faults and they were to take account of those of their suc- 
cessors. 

To reap the greatest advantages possible from a treaty 
“weightier in promises than in realities’ was, during the first 
six months of 1920, the policy of Alexander Millerand, the 
former socialist who had so frightened the bourgeoisie when he 
had entered the ministry of Waldeck-Rousseau, and who now 
had become the leader of the conservative national Bloc. But 
to get any benefit from the treaty, to realize it, it was necessary 
to interpret it also and it immediately appeared that England 
did not interpret it as the French did. Thereupon the Entente 
was dissolved. The United States, whose government had im- 
pressed on the peace the mark of its theoretic views, had dis- 
avowed President Wilson, had refused to ratify the act of Ver- 
sailles and had concluded a separate peace with Germany. In 
England the idea was growing that it would be well to treat 
Germany as France after 1815 had been treated by the British 
government. In place of finding the English at her side to 
compel Germany to hold to her engagements, France had now 
to resist her in order not to lose the fruit of her victory or had 
to yield for fear of breaking with her. In the search for a 
solution which should satisfy every one, repeated conferences 
revealed the discord among the victorious peoples; this encour- 
aged the Germans and injured France’s credit. This was the 
state of affairs when in August, 1920, Poland was invaded by 
the Russians. Thus Europe, in the new organization which 


470 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


had grown out of the treaties, was not guaranteed against the 
risk of war and it was from Communist Russia that this 
risk was now coming. A still more serious thing was that 
neither among the new allied powers nor among the new states 
which owed their life to them was there any country except 
France who showed itself disposed to save the Polish Republic 
from a new partition. Millerand, having taken the initiative 
to send aid to Poland under General Weygand, the red army 
was repelled after having reached the very suburbs of Warsaw. 
This event showed the fragility of the new Europe which was in 
no way pacified in the East where Turkey still continued to 
refuse to accept the conditions of the victors. After the sudden 
peril which had appeared in Poland, the success of the decision 
taken by Millerand made him popular and almost immediately 
he succeeded President Deschanel, who was obliged through ill- 
ness to resign his position. He died soon after. 

Alexander Millerand in entering upon his duties as president 
of the Republic had announced his intention of playing an ac- 
tive rôle, of assuring thereby the continuity of French policy 
and of not remaining, as had his predecessors since Marshal 
MacMahon, in the attitude of a witness or an arbitrator. For 
the first time in many years the idea of revising the constitution 
of 1875 was revived. The new president used the prerogative 
which he had asked for, when in 1922 he parted with Aristide 
Briand, whom he had chosen the year before as his prime minis- 
ter. Briand, also trying to carry out the treaty of Versailles 
and to carry it out in accord with the Allies, had made greater 
and greater concessions to the English point of view. At the 
conference at Cannes Lloyd George had been on the point of 
obtaining what he was looking for, a sort of agreement between 
the victors and the conquered Germans, with the participation 
of Germany herself. The protest of the Chambers and of pub- 
lic opinion determined Millerand to recall Briand from Cannes 
and the prime minister resigned without having been over- 
turned by a parliamentary vote. 

Opposed to the policy of concessions which he had been at- 
tacking in the press, Raymond Poincaré was naturally desig- 





WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 471 


nated to take over the government. For him, the treaty of 
Versailles, which he could have wished to be better, was in- 
violable. Such as it was, however, it had to be applied without 
suffering new amputations and without reducing France’s 
eredit which had not been helped by the postponements, at- 
tenuations and delays which had successively been accorded 
Germany. France then returned to the integral execution of 
the treaty, through force of necessity, all other means having 
failed. In the meantime the Germans, alleging disorder in 
their finances, suspended their payments one by one. After so 
many experiments which had failed, there remained only one 
system to try, that of pledges. There had already been talk of 
the Ruhr Basin, one of the richest mining and industrial regions 
of Germany. The repeated and willful failure of Germany to 
meet her engagements having been proved by a Reparations 
Commission, the French government in concert with Belgium 
decided in accordance with the provisions of the treaty 
to occupy the Ruhr. On January 11, 1923, without striking 
a blow, the French troops entered Essen. Thus the treaty of 
peace, in its own right had ended nothing. It still demanded 
new efforts on the part of France and her account with Ger- 
many was far from being settled. The work continued with the 
days and the days of the nations are long. 

We are now coming to the point where this history is to end. 
In proportion as we approach the time in which we are living, 
the broad lines escape us. They will reveal themselves only in 
their results, which are still lacking. It is probable that the 
occupation of the Ruhr will be the culminating point from 
whence future events will flow. What has France been seeking 
since peace was concluded? Security, guaranties against a 
possible German revenge. She has also sought the reparations 
which were promised to her, which she has not had and without 
which the establishing of her prosperity is uncertain. In this 
task she has met with the resistance of Germany and she has 
been hindered by England. The two foreign forces against 
which France, through the course of centuries, has had so 
often to defend her independence, or between whom she has had 


472 HISTORY OF FRANCE 


to fend her way, are in a certain measure, again united against 
her. France declared that she would not leave the Ruhr or the 
left bank of the Rhine as long as Germany had not fulfilled her 
engagements. It remains to be seen whether external pressure 
or a change of position within, will not make her renounce this 
resolution. At present we cannot say. All is hidden in the 
future. 

All that one can discern in the light of the most recent events, 
is that the peace, in not holding to its promises, has left France 
in the strange position of a victorious but wounded country. 
France has at her command, for a time which is impossible to 
calculate, the greatest military force in Europe. But she has 
no navy and she possesses a vast colonial domain—increased 
still more by the addition of Syria—which she would be inca- 
pable of defending. Her entire history teaches that this is a 
dangerous position. 

Deprived of her reparations on which she had counted, which 
have not been paid and which may never be paid, France is, in 
spite of her victory, a people which has been invaded and devas- 
tated. The wrong, which Germany intentionally did her, re- 
mains, and she is in this respect as though she had been con- 
quered. By her own endeavors, by her own saving, France has 
already restored a large part of her ruins. But the work is not 
finished. It has already required considerable capital which, 
added to the enormous expenses of the war, form a colossal debt 
whose exact evaluation is difficult because of her return to the 
system of paper money. Financial difficulties, when they are 
serious, become political difficulties; we saw this at the end of 
the Revolution. The question of taxes, when their imposition 
is very heavy, 1s formidable because it provokes protests and 
favors demagogy. This is a situation which has presented it- 
self more than once in French history. A weak government is 
tempted by the too facile expedient of assignats, which bring 
ruin. On the other hand, to count upon reasonable and volun- 
tary sacrifice on the part of a whole nation, is running a big 
risk. After the experience of past centuries, one may well ask 
himself if the question of money will not be for some time to 


WAR AND PEACE—WORKS AND DAYS 473 


come at the base of all politics and if, both within and without, 
French policy will not depend upon it and finally if the govern- 
ment will not tend to reénforce itself and break away from the 
rules of the parliamentary democracy in order to withdraw the 
measures of public safety from general discussion. At the 
moment that this history ends, the Republic has already arrived 
at a régime of arbitrary decrees, and it is not sure that this will 
be sufficient. Let but a majority reject or overturn this régime, 
a remodeling of the Napoleonic Empire, and it will be neces- 
sary to abandon the regular finances and to run the risk of great 
disorder or else, in the name of public safety, deny the rights of 
the majority. 

We can see almost everywhere in Europe, in the countries 
devasted by the war, that the governments have lost their foot- 
hold. The old world is in a state which much resembles chaos. 
There is an extreme confusion of ideas. Full powers, dictator- 
ships, these are words which no longer terrify and which seem 
natural, in spite of the fact that everywhere we see posted the 
names of a Republic or Democracy. Out of the vast destruction 
which the war and its following revolutions have caused, no 
one can say what is being brought forth and what is provisional 
and what is lasting. Only when we compare France with the 
other countries, and when we consider the heights and depths 
of her history, we see she is not the worst sufferer. Exposed 
to tribulations, often menaced in her very existence—she had 
been so most terribly, in 1914—-she has never been subject to 
those weakenings or long eclipses from which so many other 
nations have suffered. Her social structure remains solid and 
well balanced. The middle classes, her great strength, always 
renew themselves in a short time. After all her convulsions, 
often more violent than elsewhere, she quickly returns to order 
and authority for which she has a natural taste and instinct. 
. . . If one had not this confidence, it would not be worth 
while to have children. 


i] 
‘ 





INDEX 


Abd-el-Kader, 388 
Abelard, 42 
Aboukir, defeat by Nelson at, 317 
Acte additionel, 361 
Adalbéron, 32 
Adrets, 129 
Ætius, 6 
Affre, 399 
Agadir, Moroccan situation, and, 
450 
Agincourt, battle of, 85 
Aides, indirect taxes, 322. 
See also Taxes 
Aix-la-Chapelle, Congress of 1818 
at, 368 
residence of Charlemagne, 25 
treaty of, 190, 227 
Alaric, 7 
Albigenses, crusade against, 42, 47 
Alexander of Russia, 344, 347 
Algeria, conquest of, 388 
Alliance, Holy, 368 
Alliances of 1914, 447 
Alsace, 193 
lost in 1870, 420, 425 
World War object, recovery of, 
459 
Amboise, conspiracy of, 125 
Amiens, peace of, 327 
repulse of Germans at, 464 
Anastasius, 11 
Anglo-Hanoverians, 225, 236 
Anne of Austria, 157 
Anne of Beaujeu, 101 
Anne of Brittany, 102 
Appanages, system of, 53 
Arabs, capture of Bordeaux by, 18 
Arians, 7 
Armada, Spanish, 141 
Armagnac, 83 
Armistice of 1918, 465 
Arques, battle of, 146 
Arras, congress of, 90 
treaty of, 99 
Arréts de justice, 193 
Arteveld, 67 
Artois, counterattacks at, 460 
Assembly of 1871, 423 


Assignats, or mortgage bonds, 276, 
292 

Attila, 6 

Augsburg, league of, 185, 194 

Austerlitz, victory at, 338 

Austrasia, rivalry between Neus- 
tria and, 13 

Austria, wars with, 110 

Austrian Alliance, 236 

Austrian war of 1792, 293, 317 

Avignon, residence of Popes, 60 


Bagaudæ, early communists, 8 

Balance of power, 114 

Balkan War, first, 451 

Barrès, 450 

Barricades, day of the, 141 

Barrier, treaty of the, 204 

Barry, 230, 242 

Barthélemy, 315 

Bastille, fall of the, 267 

Bautzen, battle of, 349 

Bazaine, 421 

Belle-Isle. See Fouquet 

Berry, 84, 366 

Bismarck, 407, 413, 416, 420 

Blanche of Castile, 49 

Blanche Sforza, 103 

Blanqui, 421 

Blois, 68 

Bliicher, 362 

Bonaparte, 312, 314, 317, 319, 321. 

See also First consul and Na- 
poleon I 

Boniface VIII, 58 

Book of the Trades, 52 

Bordeaux, agreement of, 423 
provisional capital at, 457 

Bouillon, 154 

Boulanger, 440 

Boulangism, 439, 442 

Bourbon, 11], 124 

Bouvines, battle of, 46 

Brandenburg, 191 

Bréa, 399 

Bremen, annexation of, 347 

Breteuil, 267 


476 


Brétigny, treaty of, 74 
Briand, 449, 470 
Brienne, 249, 257, 261 
Brissot, 290 

Broglie, 430, 435 
Broussel, 172 

Brumaire 18th, 312, 318 
Brunhild, 14 
Brunswick, 296 
Burgundians, 7 
Burgundy, Flanders and, 79 
Byng, 214, 234 


Cabochin Ordinance, 84 

Cadoudal, 328, 332 

Caesar, 3 

Cahiers, lists of grievances, 101 
264 

Caillaux, 450, 452, 463, 469 

Calais, capture of, 68 

Calmette, 452 

Calonne, 249, 255 

Calvin, 121 

Cambacérés, 323, 329 

Cambrai, treaty of, 115 

Campo Formio, peace of, 317 

Canada, loss of, 235, 238 

Cannes, conference at, 470 

Capetian dynasty, 13, 30, 34, 41 

Carbonari, and secret societies, 367 

Carloman, 18 

Carnot, 441, 443 

Carolingian dynasty, 14, 16, 18, 20, 
25 

Catean-Cambrésis, treaty of, 121 

Catherine de’ Medici, 124, 130 

Catholic Alliance, of Philip II of 
Spain, 131 

Catholic Committee of Safety, 147 

Catholic League, 116 

Cauchon, 90 

Cavaignac, 399, 403 

Cazalés, 279 

Celts, 1 

Cerialis, 5 

Cerignola, defeat at, 106 

Chambord, 401, 428, 431 

treaty of, 119 

Chambre introuvable, 365, 369, 373 

Champagne, counterattacks at, 460 

Charlemagne, 21, 25 


INDEX 


Charleroi, advance of Germans on, 
457 
Charles Martel, 17 
Charles IV, 63 
of Spain, 343 
Charles V, 71, 75, 78 
of Spain, 108, 110, 114, 120 
Charles VI, 80, 81 
Charles VII, 87, 92 
Charles VIII, 101-104 
Charles IX, 126 
Charles X, 143, 369, 374 
Charles of Bourges. See Charles 
VII 
Charles of Lorraine, 32 
Charles the Bad, 69, 72 
Charles the Bald, 25 
Charles the Bold, 30, 95, 98 
Charles the Fair. See Charles IV 
Charles the Fat, 30 
Charles the Simple, 31 
Charles the Terrible, 
the Bold 
Charles the Well-served. See 
Charles VII 
Charles the Wise. See Charles V 
Charlotte Corday, 305 
Charolais. See Charles the Bold 
Chateaubriand, 50, 365 
Châtillon, 137 
Chauvelin, 222 
Chemin-des-Dames, repulse of Ger- 
mans at, 464 
Childeric, 8 
Chilperich, 14 
Choiseul, 237, 239 
Church, origin of bond between 
state and, 21 
revolution of 1789 and the, 278 
schism in, 81 
Cid, the, 165 
Cinq-Mars, 163 
Clemenceau, 439, 443, 463, 468 
Clement V, 60 
Clement VIII, 154 
Clément, Henry III assassinated 
by, 143 
Clotaire IT, 15 
Clovis, 7, 11, 13 
Colbert, 185, 220 
Coligny, 120, 124, 132 
Colonies, English, growth of, 204 
revolt of North American, 248 


See Charles 


INDEX 


French, growth of, 217 
loss of, 238 
Combes, 446 
Comines, 98 
Communism, 8, 39, 396, 421, 425, 
470 
Compiégne, repulse of Germans at, 
464 
Concini, 157 
Concordat, the first, 108, 112 
Condé, 124, 126, 127, 131, 333 
Conflans, treaty of, 96 
Conrad of the Hohenstaufens, 
execution of, 54 
Constituent Assembly of 1848, 397 
Constitution of the Year VIII, 
remodeling of, 323 
Copenhagen, bombardment of, 342 
Corbie, year of, 165 
Corps, legislatif, 403 
Corsica, Second Seven Years’ War 
and, 234 
Cotillon II. See Pompadour 
Coucy, 40 
Council of the Ancients, 319 
Council of the Five Hundred, 319 
Courtrai, defeat at, 57, 60 
Coutras, victory at, 140 
Crécy, battle of, 68 
Crépy-en-Laonnois, treaty of, 117 
Crimean War, 407 
Cromwell, 177 
Crusades, birth of, 35 
end of, 50, 53 
first, 39 
political influence of, 38 
Currency, debasing of, 58, 122, 277 
Czechoslovakia, birth of, 466 


Dagobert, 15 

Damiens, 235 

Dandelot, 120, 124 
Danton, 279, 297, 309 
Dardanelles, repulse at, 460 
Daudet, 462 

Day of the Barricades, 141 
Day of the Dupes, 163 
Day of the Spurs, 57 

Day of the white plume, 146 
Delcassé, 446, 448 
Delescluze, 426 
Deportations, 316 


ATT 


Déroulède, 444 

Deschanel, 469 

Desmoulins, 271, 279 

Directory, the, 312, 318 

Dixmude, rout of Germans at, 458 

Do-nothing kings, 17, 31 

Dresden, victory at, 349 

Dreux, Guise prevails over Condé 
and Coligny at, 130 

Dreyfus Affair, 443 

Druids, 1 

Dubois, 213 

Duguesclin, 75 

Dumouriez, 293 

Duquesne, 192 


Ebroin, 15 

Edict of Nantes, 152 

Egyptian expedition, 317 

Elba, arrival of Napoleon I at, 352 
return of Napoleon I from, 359 

Eleanor of Guyenne, 42 

Emigrés, 185, 273, 354 

Empire, 335. See also First Empire 

Ems Dispatch, 416 

Encyclopedists, 239 

English War of 1792, 303 

Essling, battle of, 345 

Estrées, 150 

Eudes, 30 

Eugénie de Montijo, 406 

Eylau, battle of, 341 


Fallières, 451 

Fashoda affair, 446 

Faure, 443 

Favre, Jules, 418-420 

Fénelon, 207, 212 

Fête of the Federation, 280 

Fête of the Supreme Being, 310 

Feudalism, 23, 28, 29, 41, 151, 268 

Feuillants, successors to Jacobins, 
284, 287 

Field of the Cloth of Gold, 110 

Figaro, assassination of editor of, 
452 

Finances, 55, 58, 122, 215, 248 

First Consul, 321, 325, 328, 330. 
See also Bonaparte and Na- 
poleon I 

First Crusade, 39 


478 


First Republic, 300 

First Restoration, 49 

Flanders, Burgundy and, 79 

Fleury, 219, 225, 255 

Foch, 464 

Fontainebleau, abdication of Na- 
poleon I at, 352 

Pope a prisoner at, 346 

Fontenoy, victory at, 227 

Forbach, defeat at, 417 

Formigny, victory of, 91 

Forty-Five, the, 139 

Fouquet, 179, 221 

Fourteen Points, Wilson’s, 466 

Franchises, provincial and munic 
ipal, 28 

Francis I, 108-117 

Francis II, 124-126 

Frankfort, treaty of, 428 

Franks, 6 

Fredegund, 14 

Frederick II of Prussia, 223 

Free Cities, origin of, 40 

Freiburg, treaty of, 108 

Friedland, victory at, 341 

French Academy, Richelieu founds, 
165 

Froeschwiller, defeat at, 417 

Fronde, 48, 170, 174, 176 

Fructidor 18th, 312 


Gabelle, salt tax, 121 

Gaels, or Gauls, 1 

Gallican Church, declaration of 
rights of, 183 

Galliéni, 457 

Gallipoli, repulse at, 460 

Gambetta, 414, 420, 428, 434, 438 

Gerard, 348 

Germanic liberties, policy of, 168 

Ghent, Louis XVIII retires to, 360 

Gibraltar, seized by the English, 
201, 251 

Girondists, 287, 292, 307 

Gondi, 135, 174 

Goths, 6 

Gregory III, 18 

Grévy, 424, 437 

Guise, François, 119, 124, 128 

Henri, 130, 138, 142 
Guizot, 388 
Gustav us-Adolphus, 163 


INDEX 


Hague Tribunal, 454 
Hamburg, annexation of, 347 
Hanoverians, Anglo-, 225, 236 
Hapsburg, house of, 109 
Hastings, battle of, 38 
Henriette d’Entraigues, 150 
Henriette of France, 161 
Henry I, 37 
Henry II, 117-121 
Henry III, 137-144 

of England, 51 
Henry IV, 132, 143, 145, 151, 156 
Henry V of England and France, 

85 

Henry VIII of England, 110 
Henry le Béarnais. See Henry III 
Héristal, 16 
Hindenburg, 463 
Hôchstädt, defeat at, £01 
Hohenzollerns, 205, 222, 287, 465 
Holland, invasion of, 191 
Holy Alliance, 368 
Holy League, manifesto of, 138 
Hugh Capet, 31, 36 
Hugh the Great, 31 
Hugo, 402, 404 


Huguenots. See Protestants 
Hundred Years’ War, 29, 43, 65, ; 

67, 92, 100 À 
Huns, 6 ? 
Iberians, 1 6 


Indemnity, of 1815, 363 
of 1871, 425 
India, loss of, 235, 238 
recovery of certain colonies in, 

251 ; 
Indies, Company of the, 215 
Innocent IIT, 46 
Innocent XI, 194 
Iron Crown of Lombardy, the, 22 
Italy, wars with, 103, 106 
Ivry, day of the “white plume” at, 

146 


Jacquerie, 73, 268 

Jansenism, 170, 230, 235 
Jarnac, death of Condé at, 131 
Jean-Bart, 197 

Jeanne d’Albret, 124, 132 
Jeanne la Folle, 103 


INDEX 479 


Jean sans Peur, 82 

Jean sans Terre (Lackland), 44 

Jena, victory at, 340 

Jesuits, sacrifice of, 239 

Jeu de Paume, oath of, 266 

Joan of Arc, 87-90 

Joffre, 457 

John the Good, 69, 74 

Joseph Bonaparte, 339, 343 

Josephine Bonaparte, divorced by 
Napoleon I, 346 

Joseph of Austria, 202, 250 

Joyeuse, 140 

Judgments of God, 52 

Judiciary Code of Louis IX, 52 

Julian, 5 

Julius II, 106 

July Monarchy, 376 

Junot, 342 


Kant, 267 

Kiel Canal, 445 

La Balue, 97 

La Boétie, Contre un, 122 


Lackland, John, 44 

Lafayette, 250, 257, 271, 279, 284, 
306, 367 

Lafitte, 379 

Lagos, defeat of fleet at, 237 

La Hogue, naval disaster of, 196 

Lally-Tollendal, 236, 242 

Landen, Pippin of, 15 

Language, birth of French tongue, 
12 

La Renaudie, 125 

La Rochelle, siege of, 162 

La Valliére, 150, 208 

Lavardin, 194 

La Vendée, 307 

Law, 214 

League of Augsburg, 185 

League of Nations, 467 

League of Neutrals, 327 

League of Patriots, 441 

League of Public Welfare, 95 

Lebrun, 323 

Lecomte, 426 

Legislative Assembly, 291 

Leipzig, defeat at, 349 

Lens, victory at, 167, 172 


Leopold of Austria, 189, 198, 287 

Leopold I of Belgium, 381 

Lessart, 293 

Lettres de cachet, 259 

L’Hospital, 124 

Ligurians, 1 

Limon, 297 

Lionne, 189 

Lits de justice, 258 

Lloyd-George, 470 

Lombardy, iron crown of, 22 

London, Pact of, 458 

Lorraine, 26, 192, 243, 425, 459 

Lothaire, 25, 31 

Lotharingia, or Lorraine, 26, 117, 
192, 243 

Louis VI, 41 

Louis VII, 42 

Louis VIII, 46 

Louis IX, 48, 52 

Louis X, 61 

Louis XI, 93, 100, 102 

Louis XII, 102, 104, 107 

Louis XIII, 157-166 

Louis XIV, 177, 181-209 

Louis XV, 210-241 

Louis XVI, 239, 244, 274, 281, 283, 
295, 302 

Louis XVII, 298 

Louis XVIII, 283, 328, 352, 360, 
363, 367 

Louis Bonaparte, 345 

Louis Hutin. See Louis X 

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, 384, 
387, 398, 400, 402, 406, 412, 
418 

Louis-Philippe, 375, 378, 385, 389, 
392 - 

Louis the Debonair, 25 

Louis the Fat. See Louis VI 

Louis the Father of the People. See 
Louis XII 

Louis the German, 25 


Louis the Great Monarch. See 
Louis XIV 

Louis the Roi--soleil. See Louis 
XIV 


Louise of Savoy, 112 

Louisiana, 331 

Loustalot, 271 

Louvois, 195 

Lucon, Richelieu of. See Richelieu 
Ludendorff, 463 


480 INDEX 


Lunéville, treaty of, 325 
Luther, 109 

Liitzen, battle of, 349 
Luynes, 159 


Machault, 229, 235 

Machiavelli, 106 

MacMahon, 430, 435, 437 

Madrid, treaty of, 113 

Magna Charta, 48 

Maillotins, sedition of the, 80 

Maintenon, 150, 184, 208 

Malet, 348 

Malplaquet, day of, 202 

Malvy, 462, 469 

Marat, 271, 279, 299, 305 

Marcel, 64, 70, 72, 73 

Marengo, victory at, 325 

Margaret of Navarre, 116 

Margaret of Valois, 133 

Marguerite of Austria, 102 

Marguerite of Provence, 49 

Marignano, defeat of Swiss at, 108 

Marigny, 62 

Marle, 40 

Marie Antoinette, 239, 307 

Marie de Medicis, 157 

Marie Leczinska, 218 

Marie Louise Bonaparte, 346 

Maria Theresa, 220 

Marius, 4 

Marne, first battle of, 457 
second battle of, 465 

Marot, 116 

Mary of Burgundy, 99 

Mary Stuart, 118 

Masaniello, 170 

Maupeou, 240 

Maurepas, 247 

Maury, 279 

Maximilian, of Mexico, 411 
son of Frederick, of Austria, 99, 

109 

Mayenne, 146 

Mazarin, 159, 174 

Mehemet Ali, 386 

Merovingian dynasty, 7, 11 

Mesmer, 249 

Metternich, 395, 409 

Mexico, Maximilian of, 411 

Mignons, favorites, 139 

Millerand, 444, 469, 470 


Mirabeau, 257, 266, 270, 280, 282 

Miromesnil, 247 

Mississippi Company, 215 

Molay, 60 

Molé, 174 

Moliére, 182 

Mons, advance of Germans on, 457 

Monsieur. See Louis XVIII 

Montcalm, 235 

Montespan, 150, 208 

Montesquieu, 206, 216 

Montfort, 47, 68 

Montlhéry, 37, 96 

Montluc, 129 : 

Montmorency 120, 128, 137 ‘ 

Moroccan situation, 447, 449 k 

Moscow, retreat of Napoleon I 
from, 348 

Mounier, 266, 273 

Murat, 343 


ae sd 


Nantes, edict of, 152, 182 
Napoleon I, 335, 337, 339, 341, 343 
346, 348, 350, 352, 359, 361, 363, 
367. See also Bonaparte and 
First Consul 
Napoleon III. See Louis-Napoleon 
Bonaparte. 
Napoleonic Succession, 350 
Nassau, 57 
National Assembly of 1789, 266 
National Convention, 296 t 
Nationalization of property, 276 
National sentiment, birth of, 46, 
59 
Navarino, battle of, 371 
Navy, beginning of, 56 
creation of, 77 
decadence of, 186, 196 
destruction at Aboukir, 317 
restoration under Napoleon I, 
335 
Necker, 248, 263, 267, 276 
Nemours, 99 
Neustria, rivalry between Austrasia 
-and, 13 
Ney, 348, 360, 364 
Nicholas I of Russia, 371 
Nicholas II of Russia, 462 
Niel, 414 
Nimwegen, peace of, 192 
Noailles, 215, 268 


INDEX 


Noblesse de robe, 158 

Nogaret, 59 

Noir, 415 

Norman Conquest, political feat- 

ures of, 38 

Normandy, ceases to be English, 45 
ceded to Rollo, 37 

Normans, or Northmen, 27 

Novara, battle of, 107 

Novi, defeat at, 317 


Orange, 132, 187, 191, 195, 200 
Orléans, 82 
Otho of Germany, 45 


Pacte de famine, 242 

Pact of London, 458 

Painlevé, 462 

Palatinate, devastation of, 195 

Paris, 1870 investment of, 420, 425 

Parliaments, 240, 245, 258 

Parma, 147, 233 

Passau, convention of, 119 

Paul I of Russia, 324, 327 

Paulette, quarrel of the, 158 

Pavia, defeat at, 112 

Peter the Great of Russia, 216 

Peter the Hermit, 38 

Philip I, 37, 39 

Philip III, 53 

Philip IV, 55-61 

Philip V, 62 

Philip VI, 63-68 

Philip Augustus, 44 

Philippe Egalité, 302, 307 

Philip the Bold, 54. See also Philip 
AIS 

Philip the Fair. See Philip IV 

Philip the Tall. See Philip V 

Picquigny, treaty of, 100 

Piedmont, annexation of, 330 

Pierre Bonaparte, 415 

Pilnitz, Declaration of, 288 

Pippin, 15, 18, 29 

Pitt, 238 

Pius VII, 328, 335 

Plantagenet dynasty, 37, 43 

Plombiéres, interview at, 408 

Poincaré, 450, 451, 453 


Poissy, religious reconciliation at- 


tempted at, 128 


481 


Poitiers, battle of, 71 
Poland, Germans in possession of, 
460 
independence of, 220, 253, 470 
partition of, 243, 286, 302 
Polignac, 373 
Pompadour, 230, 233, 242 
Poniatowski, 345 
Pontchartrain, 199 
Portier. See Marigny 
Portugal, Napoleon I and, 342 
Pragmatic Sanction, 220 
Praguerie, revolts, 94 
Pressburg, peace of, 339 ; 
Primogeniture, succession by, im- 
portance of principle of, 33 
Pritchard Affair, Tahiti and, 388 
Privileges, evil influence of, 261 
Probus, 5 
Protestants, concessions to, 131 
conspiracy of Amboise, 125 
emigration of, 185 
final defeat of, 163 ; 
massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s 
Eve, 130, 133, 135 
Opposition to, 113, 116 
reformation and, 122 
relation of Albigenses to, 47 
Provincial Letters, Pascal’s, 170 
Pyrenees, treaty of the, 178, 193 


Ragnachaire, 12 
Rastadt, congress of, 317 
Ratisbon, truce of, 194 
Ravaillac, 150, 156 
Ravenna, victory at, 106 
Reformation, 122 
Reign of Terror, 308 
Religion, 9 
Renaissance, the, 108 
René, King of Aix, 99 
Restoration, 353 
Revolution, communal, 39 
in Russia, 462 
of 987, 27 
of Etienne Marcel, 64, 70 
Of Paris, 72 
of 1789, beginning of, 270 
causes of, 253, 256 
emigration during, 273 
end of, 318 
Fête of the Federation, 280 


482 | INDEX 


influence of American revolt 
upon, 249 Ù 
the Church and, 278 
of 1830, 369, 372 
of 1848, 393, 405 
Richard the Lion-hearted, 44 
Richelieu, 158, 161 
Ripaurians, 6 
Robertinian dynasty, 30, 34 
Robert the Pious, 37 
Robert the Strong, 30 
Robespierre, 291, 296, 301, 309, 311 
Rochambeau, 250 
Rocroy, victory at, 167 
Roger-Ducos, 319 
Rois fainéants, 17 
Roland, 22 
Rollo, 37 
Roman Conquest, 2 
Rome, France independent of, 47 
influence on Gaul, 1-10 
Napoleon’s son crowned king of, 
346 
Philip IV and, 58 
sack of, 115 
Rousseau, 242 
Rouvier, 447 
Rue Transnonain, massacre of the, 
382 
Ruhr Basin, occupation of, 471 
Russian Alliance of 1891, 443 
Russian Mobilization of 1914, 454 
Russo-Japanese War, 447 
Ryswick, peace of, 197 


Sadova, Austria defeated by Prus- 
sia at, 411 

Saint-André, 128 

Saint Bartholomew Massacre, 130, 
133, 135 

Saint Eloi, 15 

Saint-Germain, 247 

Saint Helena, deportation of Na- 
poleon I to, 363 

Saint Hilary, 7 

Saint Irenæus, 7 

Saint Léger, 15 

Saint Louis. See Louis IX 

Saint-Pol, 99 

Saint Remigius, 8 


Saint Thomas Aquinas, 50 

Salic law, 62 

Salonika, expedition of, 460 

Sans-culottes, 292 

Santerre, 279 

Saracens, invasion by, 27 

Sarajevo, crime of, 452 

Satire Ménippée, 149 

Savona, Pope deported to, 346 

Savonarola, 103 

Schleswig-Holstein, affair of, 410 

Scrutin d'arrondissement, 440, 442 
468 

Scrutin de liste, 440 

Sebastopol, defeat of Russia at, 407 

Second Empire, 403, 412 

Second Republic, 393 

Sedan, capture of Napoleon IIT at, 
418 

Sedition of the Maillotins, 80 

Ségur, 245 

Seigneuries, ecclesiastical, origin 
of, 28 

Sembat, 451 

Septembrists, 301 

Serbia, ultimatum of Austria to, 
452 

Seven Years’ War, 223-227, 232-238 

Shepherds, anarchy of, 50, 63 

Sicilian Vespers, 55 

Sicily, conquest of, 53 

Sieyés, 319 

Sigibert, 12, 14 

Sigismund, 92 

Sixteen, the, 147 

Sluys, battle of, 67 

Society, 46 

reformation by Louis IX, 52 

Soliman, 114 

Somme, repulse of Germans at, 461 

Song of Roland, 22, 24 

Spanish Armada, 141 

Spanish succession, 189, 197, 199 

Staél, 361 

States General, 58, 70, 101, 158, 
240, 260, 266 

Strasbourg, annexation of, 193, 197 

Suffrage, universal, 402 

Suger, 41 

Sully, 154 

Swiss, treaty of Freiburg with, 108 

Syagrius, 9 

Syria, mandate over, 472 


pee RRR I er 


INDEX 483 


Taille, or fiscal inventory, 264 
Taillebourg, battle of, 50 
Talleyrand, 257, 332 
Taxes, aides and, 78, 80, 322 
cahiers, 264 
dime royale, 206 
during revolution of 1789, 276, 
289 
gabelle, 121 
taille, 264 
war of tariffs, 186 
Télémaque, and the neo-feudal 
movement, 206, 212, 244 
Templars, order of the, destruction 
of, 60 
Tertry, battle of, 16 
Teschen, convention of, 250 
Thermidor 9th, 275, 298, 310 
Theudebald, 14 
Theuderich, 14 
Thiers, 422, 428, 430, 437 
Third Republic, 419 
Thirty Years’ War, 167 
Thouret, 284 
Tilsit, interview at, 341 
Tolbiac, Clovis at, 9 
Tonkin Expedition, 439 
Tourville, 197 
Trafalgar, defeat by Nelson at, 338 
Transtamare, 75 
Tremoille, 105 
Troyes, 84 
treaty of, 86 
Tunis Expedition, 438 
Turenne, 184, 192 
Turgot, 245, 247 
Turkey, relations between France 
and, 114 


Ulm, victory at, 337 
Undiscoverable Chamber, 365, 369, 
373 
Unigenitus, Jansenism and the 
bull of, 230, 235 
United States, participation in 
World War, 463 
War of 1812 with England, 348 
Universal Suffrage, 402 
University of Paris, 81 
Urban II, 38 
Utrecht, treaty of, 203 


Valmy, battle of, 300 

Valteline, liberation of the, 161 

Vandals, 6 

Vassy, massacre of, 128 

Vauban, 188, 190, 197, 206 

Vercingetorix, 3 

Verdun, battle of, 461 
treaty of, 25 

Vergennes, 247 

Vergniaud, 295 

Versailles, 1783 treaty of, 251, 327 
treaty of 1919 at, 467 

Vervins, treaty of, 152 

Vienna, treaty of, 221 

Vienne, 77 

Villafranca, armistice of, 408 

Villéle, 369 

Villeneuve, 337 

Visigoths, 6 

Viviani, 452 

Vizille, proclamation of, 260 

Von Kluck, 457 


Wagram, victory of, 345 
Waldeck-Rousseau, 445 
Wallenstein, 164 
Wallon Amendment, 432 
Walpole, 222 
Waterloo, defeat at, 362 
Wattignies, victory of, 308 
Wellington, 362 
Westphalia, peace of, 167, 172, 177, 
193, 225, 289, 331 
Weygand, 470 
White Mountain, battle of, 160 
White Terror, 364 
William of Germany, 422 
William the Conqueror, 38 
William III of England. See 
Orange 
Wilson, 463, 466, 469 
Wittekind, 22 
Wolsey, 110 
World War, armistice of 1918, 465 
factors underlying, 433, 453, 459 
mobilization of French, 455 
mobilization of Russians, 454 
United States participation in, 
463 
Wyclif, 77 


Yser, repulse of Germans at, 458 


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* 
: y 
. ‘ 
al ! 
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st 


“ti ne Lo MES TS 
WI À AE ie : 





a 
2 de s | 
je 





























